Due Diligence Essentials for Engineers - R2A's New Booklet

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 4, Episode 5

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss their new booklet titled Due Diligence Essentials for Engineers. 

They talk about the need for the booklet being that Engineers are becoming more involved in the governance process in providing information to boards, directors and senior people. Engineers are ones aware of the critical things that can go wrong and what boards need to know about for their due diligence obligations under the WHS/OHS legislation.

Other areas of discussion include:

• Whilst most engineers aren't directors and, therefore, don't have the due diligence obligations as spelt out by the WHS legislation, the legislation is specific about duties of designers.

• Engineers can not rely on Standards or Codes of Practice to absolve themselves of liability.

• When should engineers elevate issues to higher levels of decision-makers, and the importance of transparency in their decision-making process.

• Engineers can't be right all the time, but can be diligent. And with Registration of Engineers, due diligence provides a tool to be able to say they’ve done everything that is reasonable in the circumstances to make whatever they’re working on safe.

Purchase the book via our online store.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss their new booklet Due Diligence Essentials for Engineers.

(00:15):

We hope you enjoy their chat. If you do, please give us a rating and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you'd like to be notified when the booklet is launched, please subscribe to the R2A newsletter. The details can be found in this episode's description or head to www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:38):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:40):

Hi Gaye. Good to be here again.

Gaye Francis (00:43):

Today we're going to talk about our new booklet that we're currently working on "Due Diligence Essentials for Engineers". I guess in the past we've always focused at that director level where the WHS/OHS legislations, in particular, are aimed.

Richard Robinson (00:59):

Yeah, that's right. And that was partly because, in a sense, we were aimed at directors and in fact, the reason why we wrote the little book "Criminal Manslaughter - How Not To Do It" was because getting directors to read a large book (text: Engineering Due Diligence) was an unlikely process.

Gaye Francis (01:11):

That's very true. But I guess in the last little bit we've seen that engineers are becoming more involved in that governance process and providing the information to the directors and the senior people to be able to make those decisions.

Richard Robinson (01:26):

Well, that's simply because the engineers are the ones aware of the critical things can go wrong and just how bad it could be. And they're the ones that they boards need to know about from their due diligence obligations on the WHS/OHS legislation. But as we pointed out, and this is partly what we've been doing it for Engineers Australia because they asked us to sort of follow through on a couple of things, is that whilst most engineers aren't actually directors, so they don't have the due diligence obligations as spelt out by the WHS legislation, the legislation is quite specific about duties of designers. And I'm not entirely sure what engineers do a lot of the time, but much of the time or perhaps most of the time they ought to be designing.

(02:02):

In that regard. I just got a couple of quotes. I've just got the one, I just pulled it out of one of their presentations. It's the duty holder stamp from the Queensland version. Although so far as I know the words are virtually identical everywhere. It's not that I've gone around and compared them all and it is consistent with the Victorian OHS Act, which came in 2004, even though most of the other acts sort of commenced from the Model Act of 2011/12.

(02:25):

But I'll just spell it out: That the duty holder, designers of plant structures or substances, Section 22. A PCBU, that's the person conducting the business, undertaking the legal entity, who is a designer for a plant structural substance that is to be used or could reasonably expect it to be used at a workplace must ensure that all workplace activity relating to the plant structure or substance, including its handling construction, storage, dismantling and disposal, is designed to be without risks to health and safety.

(02:53):

And then the designer has got a duty to test with all those things without risks to health and safety. And then the designer also has a duty to provide the information to the users of whatever they've designed, again to ensure that it is safe to use without risks to health and safety.

(03:10):

So this is a pretty onerous duty and it presumably just applies to the engineers in particular, even though I don't actually see the engineers talking that much about it. Although you and I know that we've actually hammered engineers. You might recall the first time the WHS Act came in in Queensland, it came in the 1st of January, 2012, and we were reviewing doing a SIL study on a ventilation system for a tunnel. And we sort of told the engineers on, I think in November/December, you could do it the old way using target levels of risk and safety before the Act commenced. But if you hadn't decided by the 1st of January and signed off on it, the lawyers would have us all back here in the new year doing it all again. And the engineer said, that can't be right.

Gaye Francis (03:51):

I think we were back in the middle of February, weren't we? <laughs>

Richard Robinson (03:55):

It was quite peculiar because the lawyers said so and it was the duty of designers.

(04:01):

The other points which we need to make, which we actually make in all our presentations, and we're actually doing Expert Witness matter in Queensland, which we better not say too much about because of the confidentiality agreements and so forth. But one of the real problems is that the people against the complaints being made, the engineers, have been using Standards as a design tool and WHS legislation is pretty clear about this. But rather than me sort of saying, and I'll just quote some lawyers in this regard.

(04:34):

Now, the first one is from a fellow called Paul Wentworth, a partner at Minter Ellison, he's commenting on AS7000, which is the high voltage distribution network standard for conductors and so forth. And he's commenting on this just after the Model Act comes in and he says (this is 2011).

(04:52):

"Engineers should remember that in the eyes of the court, in the absence of any legislative or contractual requirement, an Australian Standard amounts only to an expert opinion about usual or recommended practice. In the performance of any design reliance on an Australian standard does not relieve an engineer from a duty to exercise his or her skill and expertise. If you can do better than the Standard and it's reasonable to do so. The legislation mandates that you must."

Gaye Francis (05:18):

And I think we've covered that in a number of podcasts, that Standards are lagging indicators, not lead indicators.

Richard Robinson (05:25):

Well the next one is from Baker & McKenzie from 2009. So this is when it's all being put together. And this is the world's largest law firm at the time - I don't know if they still are - from the Melbourne office. "Engineers cannot avoid liability in negligence or for trade practices at contravention by simply relying on a current or published Standard or Code" That was published in the Engineers Australia magazine.

(05:47):

Now this is kind of odd because we just keep coming across Engineers saying: We've done it to the Standard, it's fine. No it's not. I mean I keep giving that example, the bane of electrical regulators - the home handyman getting the roof space filling with wires and doing themselves in. Well the technology's been moving along, fabulously. Power over ethernet LEDs can run a 25 watt lumineer these days. They're building them into industry. I dunno if you've been in some of these fancy hotels now you push the button, there's a click inside the box and it's actually switching it remotely. That'll be an LED being powered over ethernet meaning it's 48 volts or less extra low voltage wiring. It's very hard to electrocute yourself on 48 volts. I mean, it's possible if you sort of do some weird things, but just touching it wouldn't never do it to you. That's the same voltage that Telstra used to provide to ring phones around the place. So there's 48 volts everywhere with the Telstra network.

(06:47):

Now the problem they've got is AS7000 came out, it's been updated, it doesn't talk about any of this sort of thing that you could put extra low voltage wiring in the roof space and make it completely safe and put all the 240 volts in the wall. And the problem with that is duty to design. If you haven't followed the criteria and a new house is built after all this technology is available and it's not an AS 3000 and you didn't consider the possibility and explain why it was or was not reasonable to put extra low voltage wiring in the roof space and somebody dies, the engineer will be out for a Criminal Manslaughter charge. That's what the legislation says.

Gaye Francis (07:20):

And I think that's one of the purposes of putting this "Due Diligence Essentials" booklet together for engineers. I think the engineers are finding themselves in the middle of the corporate soup. They're dealing with the senior decision makers and the directors. They're dealing with the people that are actually doing the jobs.

Richard Robinson (07:36):

Well the other matter we just did in Queensland, which we better not talk about either. Remember the underwriter and the committee and the lawyers are present and there's a problem with what's got to be done and the two sets of fire engineers can't sign off. And we just turned up with the provisions of the WHS legislation and used it to cut the gordian knot.

Gaye Francis (07:57):

And we've said this on a number of occasions as well. Engineers can't be right all the time, but you can be diligent. So it doesn't say that bad things aren't going to happen. But what we hope with this booklet is it gives the engineers the context in which they find themselves. And I think some of the liabilities that are starting to come to engineers, especially around registration of engineers, potentially, and the due diligence really gives them a tool to be able to say hand on heart stuff: I've done everything that I can that is reasonable in the circumstances to make whatever I'm working on safe.

Richard Robinson (08:32):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (08:33):

So in our booklet, we're sort of going through that combination of the legal context and the way where the engineers find themselves in the environment that they have to work in, but also the tools and techniques that they can use to apply to the different circumstances. And I think as part of this (podcast's) season, we're sort of going through some of the different applications. Due diligence can be applied to any industry, any problem.

Richard Robinson (09:00):

Well, correct, it's a design issue as we keep pointing out. Post event, it's a retrospective design review, it's not a retrospective risk assessment.

Gaye Francis (09:06):

So it doesn't matter whether it's industry based, doesn't matter whether it's a safety and integrity level or a project issue or a safety issue. Due diligence can be applied to all of these things.

Richard Robinson (09:17):

Well, the other problem I've got too, and this is the case, the engineers have to know when to elevate the problem to the next level. If you don't have the resources, I mean sometimes the design engineers, it's within their apparent resources to make it happen. And the legislation's in two parts. First is you obviously can't be pinged if you don't have control. And then to the extent that you do have control, you've done everything you can. Now from the point of view of a design engineer, they might have the resources all have control of the funds to actually make whatever it is they think that needs to happen happen. But they need to elevate that in a way that the senior decision makers, the people who do have the duty to demonstrate due diligence and the criminal manslaughter aspects of that, get it right. And we tend to see a lot of engineers hanging on to the decision making in a way that is quite inappropriate.

Gaye Francis (10:02):

So it's all about that transparency of arguments, isn't it?

Richard Robinson (10:06):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (10:07):

So yeah, being able to elevate it to the right person. And it might even have to go outside the organisation. Like a lot of the government projects that we see in the infrastructure projects, there's so many stakeholders involved that often even the tenderer or the person building the infrastructure doesn't necessarily have the means to determine whether it's reasonably practicable or not.

Richard Robinson (10:29):

I don't want to drag you back into history, but you may recall we have in confidence work where we killed of a major infrastructure project in Victoria and we're still not allowed to speak about it until, what is it, 30 years is up, for the simple reason that if the prime tenderer's find out how much money they spent for something which wasn't possible, the government will not be forgiven.

Gaye Francis (10:49):

I don't know where to go after that comment, Richard!

(10:55):

The booklet that's coming out and we're hoping it'll come out in Spring this year, will be that in between book between our really detailed "Engineering Due Diligence" text and the "Criminal Manslaughter" booklet aimed the directors.

Richard Robinson (11:10):

And that's why it's "Due Diligence Essentials for Engineers" because it's not obviously aimed at the senior decision maker. It's aimed at the engineers who are doing the design process and have to provide the right information the way in which the senior decision maker can actually make a proper defensible decision.

Gaye Francis (11:25):

So it has to be in the context in which they find themselves. And I think sometimes engineers believe that stuff's not applicable to me or doesn't apply to me, and then they just go about doing their things.

Richard Robinson (11:37):

Well, as you said, we're just about to do that expert witness matter in Queensland. And I'm afraid we're probably going to give the engineers involved a particularly hard time because they simply designed to the standard and to the HIPAP guidelines, neither of which will survive the scrutiny under the WHS legislation since it's going to before a judge would probably be held up, we suspect.

Gaye Francis (12:01):

I think some of it, and we talked about this in other podcast sessions, is the confusion of where the WHS and OHS legislation actually sits in relation to other legislation. Like we're talking about planning legislation and other types of legislation. But I mean our experience has been the WHS legislation sits above all of those things and it's the leading legislation and if you take that sort of thinking of how they deal with it, then all the other legislation just sort of falls away.

Richard Robinson (12:33):

You might recall before we started the hazard risk analysis for the Western Sydney Airport for the EOS, we made very sure that the Australian government solicitor agreed with our understanding and that's written up on the first page of that report saying; when the airport, the accredited airport operator and an aircraft and everything else has to be done consistent with the WHS legislation. There's a whole lot other aviation safety legislation has to comply with too. But the overarching one is the WHS legislation. And we don't quite understand why this comprehension, because it's not as though we don't keep talking about it endlessly!

Gaye Francis (13:10):

(Why) it isn't widely known in industry?

Richard Robinson (13:13):

No. Well, we'll see how we go with the next expert witness job in Brisbane. That'll be really quite interesting.

Gaye Francis (13:21):

Alright, so I think we might leave it there today. So watch out for our new "Due Diligence Essentials for Engineers" booklet and we hope you can join us next time. Have a great day.

Richard Robinson (13:32):

Thanks Gaye.

Laws of Man vs Laws of Nature in the Due Diligence Context

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 4, Episode 4

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the differences between the "laws of man" and the "laws of nature" in the context of due diligence engineering. 

Drawing on their experiences as Expert Witnesses in the Australian and NZ judicial systems, the conversation covers the following key points:

• A brief history of Common Law.

• The adversarial system in common law, where lawyers argue different sides of a case before a judge or jury, differs from the inquisitorial system in civil law jurisdictions.

• The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is a logical consequence of the adversarial system, rather than a fundamental legal principle.

• The Scottish legal system has a third verdict of "not proven" in addition to "guilty" and "not guilty", which the speakers suggest is a more pragmatic approach.

• Expert witnesses in court proceedings have a duty to the court rather than the party who hired them, which can lead to challenges when presenting evidence.

• Engineers need to manage the laws of nature first and then satisfy the laws of man in the courts.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the difference between the laws of man and the laws of nature.

(00:14):

We hope you enjoy their chat. If you do, please give us a rating and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, we'd love to hear from you. Email us admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:33):

Good morning, Richard. Welcome back to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:36):

Good to be here, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:38):

Today we're going to talk about the law and the differences in the laws of man, but we also have to relate it back to the laws of nature, which is really where the due diligence aspect comes from, especially for our type of work.

Richard Robinson (00:54):

That's right. In order to be safe or efficient or however you want to define it, due diligence means you've got to manage the laws of nature in a way that satisfies the laws of man. And the triggers, of course, the laws of man actually does vary a little bit from place to place, which can be quite confusing. Now, R2A does spend a fair bit of its time within the legal system. It's not something we actually choose to do so much as we get invited to do. So, for example, I spent some time at an expert witness case, the Supreme Court of Sydney with a fellow called John Agius Special Counsel. The judge hadn't read my expert opinion, so I had two hours just talking to him about various things, picking his brains as you do. And for example, that R2A sponsored the professor Law of Public Policy out from Cambridge in 2018. I think it was. Because he had a book out "Law As Engineering", and he was comparing what the lawyers do with what engineers do. And there are some significant parallels between the management of laws of nature and the way in which the laws of man goes about things and does things.

(01:52):

So what I thought might just be worth going through and making a few remarks about all this from the point of view of how engineers interpret what we've being told. Quite a lot of this is important in the sense that a lot of the principles the lawyers actually enunciate is a logical consequence of how things are done and how they've gone about it. For example, and I think we talked about this before, the way in which the adversarial system arose in the English common law system, it was King Henry II, they'd had a civil war. The king tried to extend the power of the king with these feudal lords who'd been on one side of the fight or the other before he became or ascended the throne.

(02:25):

And so he appointed his own Lord judges and those Lord judges took the book of common law and went through each of the fiefdoms acting as the judge instead of the previous Lord. And that means that English Law Lord had to have the same power and stature as the Duke or whoever was in charge of a particular fiefdom. And what they did was if they found the law that was common, nine out of 10 fiefdoms, then that was the common law which they applied in the 10th. Now, this has a number of direct consequences and you can pretty easily see that if you're a judge that just turned up from London on a circuit you'd never been to this place before, and some people having a dispute about something, how do you work it all out?

(03:02):

There's a couple of things you do. First of all, you are in charge of the law. Nobody else gets to decide the law. You might've noticed we were sitting in a VCAT tribunal just recently. The lawyers were having the discussion, we will decide the law, and our side was just a young couple and us. But when it came to laws of nature, that's when we came to the fore and how they were going to be managed. Now that's the first thing, the system, they hold onto that.

(03:27):

The next thing is that you do get this adversarial system because you turn up at a place you've ever been before. How does a judge come to a view about what ought to be done? And the answer is, well, the court has a court appointed representatives, barristers or lawyers, who put forward the case in a way in which the judge can understand and then they start to stash it out. And then legal arguments ensues. But it's meant to be reporting on what actually happened, the events in some constructive way. But that means those representatives have to become officers of the court. And when we're an expert witness, our first duty is to the court, not to the person who's paying us, which obviously breaks all the codes of ethics of consulting engineers. But that's the way it's done. I mean, I think it only eever happened to me once. The way it's supposed to happen is that when the other side discovers who the expert witnesses, they say, oh good, we won't have to hire ours. We'll rely on them. Doesn't happen very often, but it's very nice when it does.

Gaye Francis (04:27):

So you're working for the court and you're giving the information to the court to make an informed decision.

Richard Robinson (04:31):

That's correct. Now it's done on an adversarial basis. Now, this is where it sort of gets kind of curious because I don't know if you've ever watched Rumpole (tv show) and Leo McKern and all those sort of interesting cases, but he always had this thing about the golden threat: Innocent until proven guilty. Now innocent until proven guilty, it's not actually a principle in itself. It's just the logical consequence of having an adversarial system. Because when you go to court, the only way you can have a trial is if you plead not guilty or innocent, right? Because if you plead guilty, the trial's over apart from the penalty. So it has to be that way.

(05:08):

Now that compares itself to the Inquisitorial European, Napoleonic Roman law system where it's inquisitorial. Now if you apply that principle in an inquisitorial system, what are you going to do? Talk to the entire population to find out who's potentially guilty. The only way you could do it in Inquisitorial system is to assume that a certain pool of people are guilty and then keep asking questions until you've figured out which one probably did it.

Gaye Francis (05:32):

So you're proving that the others are innocent

Richard Robinson (05:34):

In effect, yes, but they're the consequences of the different process. It's not a special principle in itself.

(05:41):

If you choose to have an adversarial system, you must be innocent until proven guilty or you can't have the argument. Conversely, if you have an inquisitorial system, you must assume that which the guilty pool are and then prove each of them innocent.

(05:55):

Now that leads onto Scot's law, and I do admire the Scots in this one. I once did a course in Scotland. They were doing London leads in Glasgow a long time ago. And so I turned up in Scotland to give a course. And I didn't realise Scot's law was quite so different. You see in the adversarial system it's guilty or not guilty. The Scots aren't quite as trusting as that. They have a different opinion. They have three outcomes. You can be proven innocent, you can be proven guilty, or the charges can be not proven. Now, I think if you get taken to court and it can be shown beyond reasonable doubt it had nothing to do with you, that's an important finding. If the charge is not proving the Scots reserve the right to give it another bash at a later date if new evidence arises. It seems to me the Scots have a very pragmatic view of the law, which is superior to the English adversarial system. Guilty and not guilty that we...

Gaye Francis (06:53):

Have here in Australia as well.

Richard Robinson (06:54):

Yeah. Now, I'm all in favour of being given the benefit of the doubt and the idea that basically you've got to be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt before you'd be put away for a long time and all those sorts of things. So you get the benefit of the doubt. But I think the Scots have got a much better understanding of what the possible outcomes actually are. And I would've thought if we were talking about law reform commissions in Australia, consideration to adopting the Scottish model would be something we should think about.

Gaye Francis (07:21):

Well, we've talked in a number of other podcasts as well and it's, it's not a justice system per se, it's a governance system that will go through the process. It'll be due process.

Richard Robinson (07:34):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (07:35):

And so that sort of feeds into that guilty not guilty...

Richard Robinson (07:38):

They do promise justice. They promise due process. Engineers' Australia's quote: What is a fact? Is it what actually happened between sensible and smart? Most emphatically? Not at best. It's only what the trial court, the trial judge or jury thinks happened. But the trial court, the judge or jury may be hopelessly incorrect, but that doesn't matter legally speaking. I used to think I was in contempt of court for that until I found that happy quote from Engineers' Australia. I assume they have good lawyers.

Gaye Francis (08:05):

So I think that's one of the interesting things, isn't it? You go on, and that would be our experience in some of the court cases that we've been involved in. You have very clever lawyers and some of the things that are presented are very focused in and targeted in a particular direction.

Richard Robinson (08:26):

Well, I better not talk about the case in particular, but I remember doing one in a county court, I think it was... There was a six person jury panel when I turned up to do my piece, which was a genuine surprise to me, and I couldn't figure out why until I sort of got in there in the afternoon. A different jurisdiction do things in different ways. In Victoria expert witnesses don't get invited till they're needed. Whereas when I was sitting around the Supreme Court in New South Wales, you get to listen to the whole proceedings, you know exactly what's going and just how rotten the other opposing barrister may or may not be. But in this instance here I was a bit nonplus because it wasn't a big matter and I was surprised to find a jury panel. Anyway, what I did was I pulled up my report to talk to it because in the past what I've discovered is your barrister and, quotation mark, sort of says, who are you and why might you be an expert? And all these different questions they ask you. And then they make you, what the expression is, read your report into evidence. And they'd take you through your report to make the key points and things like that. Now, I pulled my report out to get ready to talk to it in the witness box and the opposing barrister said: He's going to read from his report. I said, what?

(09:34):

And then I got kicked out, the jury got kicked out, and the two barristers were going hammer and tongs before the magistrate. A little while later we get called back in and I think I worked out what happened. You see in my report I had a series of photographs showing what had happened and I'd gone through the four tests of causation. And I said, based on this, my expectation, if this matter goes to court, then I would think that the plaintiff will win the case and the defendant will lose it.

Gaye Francis (09:59):

So you put a finding in there.

Richard Robinson (10:01):

I put a finding in there. Now as I sort of discovered there is a rule that an expert witness is not allowed to lead a jury to a conclusion. And that was a conclusion.

(10:14):

Now if it was just trial by a judge, which is what I was expecting. Whether or not I've drawn a conclusion or not, the judge gives no cognizance of that. They'll listen to my argument and think whether the argument's reasonable to circumstance and therefore the finding should go one way or the other. But when there's a jury involved, I'm not allowed to do that. So that meant the barrister on my side should have told me to take that out just in case trial by jury happened. But having left it in, if you did have trial by jury, that could not be led in evidence. So the reason why I came to that conclusion was because my photographs were allowed to be submitted to the jury when we all came back inside and the barrister asked me all the core questions that were in my report, but my report was never entered into evidence.

Gaye Francis (10:57):

But didn't ask you that final question. What are your thoughts on: What would happen if?

Richard Robinson (11:02):

Well, that's correct because that was not appropriate in front of a jury.

Gaye Francis (11:05):

Yep.

Richard Robinson (11:05):

But that means the entire legal system was set up and my report wasn't helpful to the defense, let's put it that way. So the opposing barrister thought they'd do something clever and panel the jury, get rid of my report, which didn't seem to work too well for them. But anyway, that cost an awful lot more money, consumed the time resource of a whole lot of our citizens. But that was the process.

Gaye Francis (11:25):

Yeah. So I guess just in wrapping up this podcast, there are different ways that the law can be interpreted and different ways.

Richard Robinson (11:37):

Jurisdictions.

Gaye Francis (11:40):

Thank you! So you just have to be mindful of that. But always in our work that we do, you're always managing the laws of nature first.

Richard Robinson (11:48):

Yep.

Gaye Francis (11:49):

Then in a way that satisfies the laws of man.

Richard Robinson (11:51):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (11:52):

So credible, critical issues, make sure all reasonable practical controls are in place.

Richard Robinson (11:58):

Indeed.

Gaye Francis (11:59):

Thanks for joining us again, Richard, and we'll see everyone next time.

Aviation Industry & the Application of the Due Diligence Process

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 4, Episode 3

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the application of the due diligence process to the aviation industry. 

Richard discusses his recent presentation to the Australian Aviation Wildlife Hazard Group where he used the expert witness view: What is it that could have been done and if it had been done, would it have stopped it going wrong? 

Key take-aways:

• Hazards and vulnerabilities in aviation, 

• Why R2A stays away from the term risk and adopts the military approach which is to say threat, 
  Preferred communication tools, and 

• The point of the due diligence process, which legislation requires, is demonstrating you were diligent and demonstrated you cared; that you did everything reasonably practicable you could in the circumstance.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the aviation industry and the application of the due diligence process.

(00:15):

We hope you enjoy the episode if you do we'd love a rating. Also, if you'd subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, please get in touch. Email admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:37):

Morning Gaye. It's good to be back.

Gaye Francis (00:38):

It is good to be back. Today we're going to talk about one of our industry specific applications of our due diligence work that we do. And today we're going to talk about aviation and how it relates to the aviation industry. And it's really based on a presentation that you recently gave to the Australian Aviation Wildlife Hazard Group at Melbourne Zoo recently and how that went. So I'm guessing if you do an intro of what you did for that conference and then we can have a chat about some of the language that they use in the hazards that they experience.

Richard Robinson (01:17):

Just from those remarks you might gather from what Gaye just said, that we don't normally practice these (podcasts) in advance. But anyway. Basically I gave the standard expert witness view of how you go about managing these things and just explained that after it's all gone wrong and other people have died or serious injuries occurred, and you all wind up in court, the expert witnesses pop up and say: What is it that could have been done, if it had been done, would've stopped it going wrong. And obviously, after the event, when the fact is certain, that's not that hard a task, it's usually pretty obvious after the disaster, what could have been done if it had been done would've dealt with the matter. And this is just hammering the point that the court's testing as a retrospective design review, whether all reasonable controls are in place. It's not testing whether or not there was a standard or target level of risk achieved because after the event that has no meaning.

(02:08):

And I have to say the group, I think the group got that pretty fast. They understood that. And in fact because of who they are, they're talking about obviously aircraft damage and aircraft falling out of the sky. For example, somebody was going through all the stats about the number of bird strikes around the world and how much damage had been caused and how many people had died. And one of those Max 8 collisions of about 186 people died or something like that. One of the reasons why I thought it might've happened is that they thought the pitot tube, which tells the aircraft what speed it's doing had got damaged. And so it was giving the wrong information and the most likely reason for doing that was that it had been struck by something. Now they couldn't find that obviously in the crash site because that would've occurred before everything started going wrong. And if you obviously include that particular incident, that expands it further. There were a couple of other things which I hadn't realized, which obviously I thought about it briefly.

(03:00):

Australia, for example, has these wasps that like building mud homes in holes and one of the most likely places to build it is in the pitot tube. And so these airspeed indicators of aircraft can often be damaged just because the wasps are doing their thing. And it can happen quite fast. Wasps build these mud nests pretty damn fast. If the aircraft's sitting there for 24 hours, then you could have a mud nest then it quite easily. So there's a whole lot of things they have to check.

(03:26):

But the other thing which was interesting was that... you might've noticed they called the Australian Aviation Wildlife Hazard Group. It used to bird strike, but they said, well, and as you would've observed fairly unhappily,

Gaye Francis (03:38):

I will share that one of the handouts in the bag was different wildlife strikes around the world. For example, giraffes in Botswana, an alligator in the US. So a number of other animals were also experienced on the runway.

Richard Robinson (03:53):

Well, somebody had a problem, an overseas pilot had a problem in Australia with an emu and they referred to it as an Ostrich, which sort of slowed the Australians down just a bit. And the other problem they have too is a lot of time you can't actually identify the bird strike because there's not much left. I mean, one of the handouts they gave us was a sort of picture of a Boeing 747 with a bit of red on the front saying, what splat is that? Because it's important to know what kind of bird strike it is.

(04:22):

I mean you can recall we did that one at Brisbane airport I think it was. And the only reason why they knew they'd had a bird strike is because the runner on one of the jet engines had gone and they'd been badly damaged. And the reason why that was the case was because it was the ring off a homing pigeon, and that was a steel ring that had got caught in the runner. And they sort of said, what's a homing pigeon, a racing pigeon doing in our engine at Brisbane airport? And then they discovered that the local

Gaye Francis (04:50):

Pigeon club.

Richard Robinson (04:51):

Pigeon club ran racing pigeons and they used to let the pigeons off close to the airport and depending on what the weather was and what was going on, sometimes the pigeons as a flock went across the runway. Obviously the launch site was relocated for the pigeons once this became clear that that was the case, but that was only became the case because they discovered this pigeon ring that goes around the ankle. That was the only thing that was left.

Gaye Francis (05:15):

I think one of the other interesting things in your bag was this dangerous 10 species identification that was in there and sort of names 10 Australian bird species that represented in the ATSBATBS statistics. And I think it's really interesting groups. There seems to be two groups. There's sort of galahs and flying foxes and seagulls, but then there's also the white ibis and the buzzard and there seems to be two groups. There seems to be groups of birds that fly in big flocks. So the number of birds is one of the issues, but then they also put these additional birds in where the buzzards, the white ibis, because of their sheer size and the mass of them.

Richard Robinson (06:00):

They exceed what the engine can handle. I mean most people seem to know that now they fire chickens at test jet engines and all it does is provide more thrust to the engine most of the time. But birds, birds big enough. That's what actually happened in the US where they landed in the river, they flew into a flock of Canada geece and Canada geese are such a size that they will take out an engine and obviously if you have a flock, both engines can go down because one of your main precautions or controls is that each engine is capable of delivering all phases of flight. And as long as only one engine goes down, you're good. That's the second engine goes down, that gets problematic.

Gaye Francis (06:42):

Okay. So we spent a lot of time talking about the hazards or the vulnerabilities that they're exposed to.

Richard Robinson (06:48):

That was the other point. You see, they talked about this a fair bit, you might've noticed they said the Australian Aviation Wildlife Hazard. So they changed it from bird strike to wildlife because kangaroos have been struck and emus have been hit and things like that. So that was a fair thing. But they also changed the hazard and the way they were defining the terms, you see, one of the things they'd realized is that the term risk is so badly used and abused that nobody really knows what it means. And I just expanded on them because they'd understood this already, but I just expanded the presentation. I mean we've got five, but the three key ones are because we had an underwriter speak just before me who was explaining what whole losses and what had gone on in the world and what they underwrote. And the other thing was there were an awful lot of people from Southeast Asia there too. About 30% of the audience, about 140 people were from other countries. And they were particularly impressed with what the Australians were doing and how they're doing it, and particularly the ATSBs database and how they presented the information.

(07:47):

Anyway, this business of the risk, because I said look, the underwriter spoke about the risk as the thing in itself like the hull and the aviation and the aircraft is the risk. The technical people always talked about risk, likelihood and consequence, the simultaneous depreciation of both. But when you wound up in court when the fact is certain the likelihood side of the equation is now one, it's happened. And so the only risk you're talking about was the likelihood of that particular event occurring. And so the courts were just talking about likelihood. So unless you actually had this understanding

(08:17):

Now the way they were defining it, they were saying that the hazard was the problem of bird strike or animal interference at all. Then they had the threat, which was the creature being there at all. Then they called the risk, the conjunction of aircraft with whatever might be hit. And then they called the consequence, the outcome. Now we, as R2A, obviously stay away from the word risk altogether and just adopt the military intelligence approach, which is to say threat. We're happy with the hazard definition I think. But then you would have the threat, which is the potential bird strike or whatever animal strike. And then we would call that the vulnerability, that follows the military intelligence process.

Gaye Francis (08:56):

And that's the coincidence of the airplane being there at the same time as the wildlife.

Richard Robinson (09:00):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (09:01):

Yeah, that makes sense.

Richard Robinson (09:05):

How well that went down. I've yet to see.

Gaye Francis (09:08):

Have to see at the next presentation whether they've changed the name in their group or not. So they've identified the hazard. What are the controls that they can put in place?

Richard Robinson (09:20):

Well, we actually had done this at a previous presentation and I was basically explaining how we particularly prefer single line threat barrier diagrams because they're just the most communicative of a device. I mean, they were talking about bow ties, but you know how large complicated bow ties people get lost in the detail.

(09:38):

And the only technique that we've found that really works. Now I did explain it by sort of putting the James Reason swiss cheese model up because the aviation sector for reasons that are slightly obscure to me, really like that one and just sort of pointed out that it's a better alternative. And the main reason why is because when you wind up in court, I mean the legislation's clear and you remember we didn't start, for example, the hazard and risk analysis for the Western Sydney Airport until the Australian government's solicitor had actually signed off on that the way we wanted to do it, which was consistent with the provision of the WHS legislation was the right way to do it. Not using target levels of risk and safety such as New South Wales wanted to use.

(10:18):

Now the other way which I explained is that the quickest way to get to the question of what's reasonable in the circumstances was to put up a pros and cons table. And so I put that example up and the example I had on the threat barrier diagram I think was a bird scare, which means that you have basically a radar there, which is putting a laser on the birds or whatever creatures around. So if you show up and you're a kangaroo, suddenly get a green laser pointed at you or something, which sort of makes you, I dunno what this is, but this is not a good place to be.

Gaye Francis (10:49):

So you're removing the vulnerability.

Richard Robinson (10:51):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (10:52):

The intersection of the two.

Richard Robinson (10:53):

But obviously they have radar that can pick these things up. It's hard to pick up a single bird on a radar, although a flock apparently does show up.

Gaye Francis (11:00):

Right.

Richard Robinson (11:01):

And ordinarily you wouldn't expect a single bird to be able to take out a major commercial aircraft. At worst, they damage one engine. And as I pointed out earlier, we design aircraft so any single engine of a two engine aircraft can maintain all phases of flight. Even if you had to go round, it could be done.

Gaye Francis (11:20):

And I guess for this approach as well. So that was the application to wildlife and birds. But we've also used this approach in many other aerodrome or airspace, collision risk reviews that we've done.

Richard Robinson (11:32):

Well, that's basically what we did for Western Sydney Airport. It was basically a single line threat barrier diagram. It was interesting because I had a chat with the CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) guy afterwards. Obviously DASA, that's the Defense Aviation Safety Authority, (and they) basically go about it the way we describe. But CASA, to some extent, has reverted to using target levels of risk and safety, which we have expressed to them several times in the past. And you will recall, we declined to keep doing work for them when they reverted back to that.

Gaye Francis (12:00):

So they're using the target level of risk and safety that something's acceptable or not. But I mean, we've done some recent jobs in the last couple of years in New Zealand, and we've definitely used the WHS approach.

Richard Robinson (12:12):

The WHSA in that jurisdiction, NZ.

Gaye Francis (12:16):

And that was the precautionary approach. And I think one of the interesting things when we were looking at the airspace one, and it was based on a model that we developed for Tapo many years ago, and it was really saying, well, there's only half a dozen or so controls that you can put in place to make airspace safe.

Richard Robinson (12:35):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (12:37):

And you're really saying what's reasonable in the circumstances? And when you break it down to that by flipping that question, the review process becomes so much more straightforward and less complex.

Richard Robinson (12:50):

Well, I think the other point was, which I don't think people quite understand. I mean, when something horrible happens, there's a tendency to say, well, whose fault was that? Right? I mean, that's been explained to us that the rules of the road for the shipping business is all about finding fault for who's going to pay for it, in effect for what the damage was.

(13:07):

But the point about the due diligence processes, which is what the legislation requires, it isn't that you can be right all the time. And we come across this situation where engineers in particular, something bad's happened and the engineers sort of saying, it's all my fault. I didn't get it right. And you sort of got to point out to 'em. That's not the way the system works. Your duty is to be diligent. You can't be right all the time. Now the world's a complicated place, and the courts understand that. The courts aren't saying that you have to be right all the time. What the courts are saying is that you need to be diligent and demonstrate do you care? That's an entirely different thing. And so when you're talking to one of these engineers or somebody who's got themselves in the situation based saying, well, had you done everything reasonably, you could in the circumstance, because if the answer is yes, then you have been diligent.

Gaye Francis (13:53):

And what else could have you done in the circumstance?

Richard Robinson (13:54):

What else could you have done? That was the same story we had with that CFA captain who sort of said, look, I know if I keep doing this job as a volunteer for the next 10 years, I'm going to lose someone. But what I need to be able to do is look the relatives the next to kin in the eye and say, look, it wouldn't have mattered if it was my son or daughter there. We'd done everything reasonable we could. There are dangers associated with what you do here, and sometimes bad things will still happen.

Gaye Francis (14:21):

So I think we might wrap it there. But what we hope we've shown you today is, and we're going to continue in this season to do a number of applications to the due diligence process. So the due diligence process is a governance process, and it is a process that can be applied to basically anything. And I hope today that we've shown you just how we apply it in the aviation sector. So thanks for joining us, Richard, and we'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (14:45):

Thanks Gaye.

AI (Artificial Intelligence), Robots, Controls & Liability

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 4, Episode 2

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss controls and liability when it comes to AI and robots. 

OHS/WHS legislation require achieving the highest level of hazard control that is reasonably practicable. AI/Robots present potential controls to address many safety issues and can be implemented to improve safety. 

They discuss a number of examples where AI and robots are already enhancing safety and removing people from dangerous tasks, and when it comes to due diligence, organisations would need to demonstrate why it is not reasonably practicable to use them. 

The chat also covers how AI provides situational awareness and information to support human decision-making. Quality assurance processes are still necessary to ensure the robustness of AI-generated information. 

And that the use of AI technology also raises questions about liability, ethics, and morals.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss controls and liability when it comes to AI and robots.

Megan (Producer) (00:16):

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, get in touch via admin@r2a.com au.

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Hi Richard, welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:36):

Hi Gaye. Welcome back.

Gaye Francis (00:38):

We're going to talk today about AI, robots, controls and liability. And this sort of pops up as that we've given a number of board presentations and some of our clients have asked us, there's a lot of AI coming, robots coming, how do we have to implement them in our business and what does it mean for us? And I think from our engineering due diligence perspective, it's all about control. AI and robots both present potential controls to address safety issues of concern and how can they be implemented to improve safety.

Richard Robinson (01:17):

And this is the leading thing. And one of the points we keep hammering is that the legislation and OHS/WHS legislation is crystal clear in its objective. You've got to achieve the highest level of hazard control that is reasonably practicable. And it's perfectly obvious that AI in its many manifestations are going to enhance things. And the example that we most obvious is the self-drive cars. And we have a lot of clients that drive long distances. I mean the elimination options just to do everything...

Gaye Francis (01:43):

Remotely or over the phone.

Richard Robinson (01:46):

Over the phone and that sort of stuff. But if you're actually tried to run serious meetings, you've got to decide after a while, if you really want it to work, you should try to do it in person. And so if you've got to drive long distances, what's the way to do it? Now traditionally the way to do it if you had to drive out of hours is make sure you take two people and one person keeps the other one awake. The other option is to put a self-drive car, which is basically a form of AI, to help you get there. And if you start nodding off or something strange happens, it will start doing things. I don't suppose it's going to have a sharp object and poke you or anything like that...

Gaye Francis (02:18):

Elbow in the arm!?

Richard Robinson (02:20):

Whatever the previous version was. But you'll get advice that something's got to happen and if you truly did fell asleep, it'd just pull over the side of the road and stop and everyone else just keep passing past you rather than you becoming a hazard in self. Now that's a form of AI and I don't actually know any clients so far has actually deliberately brought Teslas to achieve this outcome. But it's something I think you'd have to say why you didn't do it if you were called up after the event and a horrible car accident that could have been prevented.

Gaye Francis (02:50):

And that's the question, isn't it? People are asking in terms of is it reasonably practicable in terms of AI and robots and you've got to show why it's not reasonable at a time.

Richard Robinson (03:02):

Correct. And it will change. It's one of the points why standards are ineffective because they're lagging indicators and the mandatory aspects of putting AI in cars that'll take several years to get there after it's proven to be beneficial.

Gaye Francis (03:17):

I think one of the difficult concepts that the clients that we work with are grappling with is the liability issues associated with AI and robots. Who takes responsibility, as you said in the event that there's an accident afterwards. And the way that we've sort of seen it implemented at this stage is there's always a secondary function.

Richard Robinson (03:40):

Correct. It's the backup. It's not the prime. It's like the watchdog we did for the railways in New South Wales. There's a GPS watchdog checking where the trains are and if they get to a certain proximity to the watchdog will bark. Now that's a hardwired thing. There's no intelligence in there at all. But obviously just looking at such a system and you say, how could this be has if it had AI? Well presumably it would actually look at all sorts of other factors where track gangs are, who's doing what over there, what the weather conditions are, and provide the driver with further knowledge and assistance beyond just what it currently does.

Gaye Francis (04:14):

I think that's one of the real strengths with it. It's the provision of that situational awareness and information that then people, humans can make informed decisions.

Richard Robinson (04:25):

Well, it's like when we talk about the marine pilots, which do a lot of work for, I mean they have this personal pilotage unit these days, which is their own independent app aid, but it's got apart from satellite navigation, it's got all the GPS weather forecasting and all sorts of things. And if a sudden squall was coming their way rather than the pilot of having to positively check all the time what the weather's doing, now they'll just sort of say a new weather report, the squalls coming faster than was anticipated.

Gaye Francis (04:52):

So that information's just presented rather than the pilot actually having to go and look for it.

Richard Robinson (04:57):

Correct. So all these sort of improvements and so forth that you might get, you can just sort of see... I mean we had the other discussion about you are a parent in a house with a kid and you disappear off to the toilet and the kid's found a knife and is heading towards the power point. Well, it'd be nice if a AI chirp and said kid with knife approaching power point or something.

Gaye Francis (05:17):

I could just imagine the robot flashing lights, "kid approaching". The other place that we've seen it is probably in your personal space in that specialists are using AI as a diagnostic tool.

Richard Robinson (05:35):

Yes. Well the R2A board requires that I have annual medicals and you're talking to your GP after all the usual tests for the year. And I dunno why the conversation popped up, but for ultra scans and all these other sort of tests that you do, I sort of said, isn't AI going to affect the medical? He said it already is. He said a specialist, the AI ability to detect from ultrasounds and things like that to detect a pattern or anomaly is now better than the humans are. Obviously the trick is of course that it's still a human then comes and looks at it and decides whether or not it should be reported and so forth. So the actual decision-making process remains with the human, but the actual first cut of the 'what does this mean?', the AI is obviously doing a very, very good job.

Gaye Francis (06:24):

We sort of talked about this before and with AI presenting such robust information, I guess there is a tendency or there is the potential that humans can become a little bit lazier and just rely on the information that's provided.

Richard Robinson (06:40):

But if the AI information is better than the human can give beyond reasonable doubt, it's going to happen very fast.

Gaye Francis (06:49):

So where does that leave individuals and organisations in the liability space? If you just say we've relied on that, don't you have to have some sort of quality assurance processes and proof that says that that information is robust?

Richard Robinson (07:05):

But what you're doing is flipping it around. Whereas previously it was the human supported by the AI, now it's the AI being supported by the human. That's where it gets tricky and how that move's going to happen, I don't know. I mean it's like we're talking about the roads and the rule on the sea. The mariners have told us a number of occasions. I mean big ships have an inordinate capacity to stay away from each other. You don't need special rules for the most part. And one of the reasons why I said the rules existed was so if you did have an incident and you do have to decide who's responsible and who's going to pay for what, here it is written down, even though most of the time it's not particularly relevant.

Gaye Francis (07:42):

So it's to assign liability.

Richard Robinson (07:46):

It's to assign liability a lot of the time. And I suspect that's going to keep going for some time. I understand now that the numbers say that if all cars were self-drive to a Tesla standard, there will be less accidents on the road.

Gaye Francis (07:59):

Okay. That's an interesting stat.

Richard Robinson (08:00):

That is a bit of a problem. But how would you make the shift from assigning personal liability to a driver to the AI? Does that mean all Tesla pays for all accidents here and after?

Gaye Francis (08:15):

I don't think they'd sign up to that one.

Richard Robinson (08:17):

I don't think they would either.

Gaye Francis (08:19):

That's a paradigm shift

Richard Robinson (08:21):

It, it really is.

Gaye Francis (08:22):

And you can see that's going to happen. I don't know how the actual turn is going to finally flip it one way or the other, but it will be an interesting space. But I think from our viewpoint as due diligence engineers. And when we talk to our clients, it's really about considering those other options. And we sort of haven't touched on robotics, but robotics are in a similar sort of space in that we've seen clients using robotics to take the human element out of doing some dangerous works. For example, some water utilities were using drones to do their water sampling so their people didn't have to work over water. So that took away the drowning potential. You've seen it with the clearance divers.

Richard Robinson (09:09):

Oh yes. If you're at sea in a big sea and you think your propeller's failed or something, then it's easy to send down an ROV, a remotely operated vehicle, to have a look, presumably managed by the diver, before you send the diver down. You only send the diver down when you really need to. First of all, you're going to have a look with a machine.

Gaye Francis (09:27):

So I think that's when robots are very, very useful.

Richard Robinson (09:32):

Well, the rather depressing part about all this was sort of the Ukraine war that we sort of touched on briefly because the Ukrainians are very rapidly developing electronic warfare is obviously rocketing along. The jamming of satellite signals and GPS signals and those sorts of things, so things can't navigate. So the other way to do it is to program whatever drone you've got. So if it picks, for example, a Russian tank in the distance, it doesn't care about the sequence anymore. It can see the tank, it knows what to do, it knows how to do it and it just goes and does it. But that sort of remote control weaponry is a kind of scary idea. But I think that's where we're heading very fast.

Gaye Francis (10:12):

Oh, that's totally scary. And then where do the liabilities, and I mean the ethics and the morals come into that? Which I think is a whole different podcast around that sort of stuff. And where do we start taking responsibility for some of those technologies?

Richard Robinson (10:30):

I think Ukrainians have a fairly clear view of what they intend.

Gaye Francis (10:36):

Maybe not in the war space, but hopefully in the engineering and the technological space, AI and robots can be used for improving safety for organisations.

Richard Robinson (10:48):

I'm sure that'll be the case.

Gaye Francis (10:49):

I think there's still some questions to answer around the liability issues that potentially can arise for the use of the technology. And I think somehow that there's going to have to be some more robust work around quality assurance and making sure the information that you're getting is robust to make those informed decisions and going forward.

Richard Robinson (11:10):

Well, the other one that we've mentioned a couple of times is that Sydney Decca fellow from Queensland Uni, I think it is. He's a pilot turned professional psychologist. And he just points out in passing that there are now more safety rules out there that nobody, at least of all the person doing their job's got any clue about. But you can sort of imagine, I don't know whether you want it on your hard hat, but the AI sort of camped in your phone, keeping an eye on the surroundings and if it sees something, which it gets a bad feeling about, it will alert you to it. So you don't really have to know all the details because it's not possible. So if you start doing something, and we've seen lots of things where people, they've been doing the job that way for years, but when you go and look at it says, well you're a bit lucky here that you didn't get hurt. And if you had an AI watching it, it would've of chirped up the first time he tried to do it that way.

Gaye Francis (11:55):

I think you're still going back to the value in it at the moment is around that situational awareness and giving the person information to make informed decisions.

Richard Robinson (12:05):

And alerting you to something which you're still got the decision to make. It's not doing it for you.

Gaye Francis (12:11):

Yeah. Alright. Thanks for joining us today, Richard. I hope everyone found that interesting. I'm sure this is a space that will proceed at speed over the next...

Richard Robinson (12:24):

We will be revisiting this for we hear some particularly new or novel implementation that hasn't happened before.

Gaye Francis (12:30):

So thank you again and we'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (12:33):

Thanks.

The Judicial Need for Reliable Knowledge and to Demonstrate Causation

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 4, Episode 1

In the first episode of Season 4, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the judicial need for reliable knowledge and the need to demonstrate causation. 

They highlight some of their Expert Witness examples to demonstrate how for the courts to come to a decision, they have to not only have an understanding of what went wrong, but if there was something that could have been done that would've prevented the incident. And if this hasn’t been made clear, then making a decision becomes very complicated. 

From the point of view of the courts, if things don't happen because there's a causal link to which you can assign liability or responsibility, how can they make a decision? 

They finish by talking how often it’s due process and, on a certain level, it is more important to have a decision society can live with rather than actually getting it right. 

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to season four of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the judicial need for reliable knowledge and the need to demonstrate causation.

(00:17):

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, we'd love to hear from you. Please email us at admin@r2a.com au.

Gaye Francis (00:36):

Hi, Richard, welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:38):

Good morning Gaye. Good to be back.

Gaye Francis (00:40):

Good to be back. Today we're going to talk about the judicial need for reliable knowledge and how that sort of fits in society now, and how expert witnesses behave in court. This is one of the topics that you're very, very interested in and have a lot of information on. So I think you were going to open up with an example from one of our (R2A) courses.

Richard Robinson (01:05):

Yeah. The difficulty here is that in order for the courts to come to a decision, they have to have an understanding of what went wrong and, more to the point, if there was something that could have been done by somebody in the process that if it had been done would've stopped it all going wrong. And if you can't come to a clear understanding what that is, then making decision becomes very complicated.

(01:25):

Now, the simplest way to do this is just to explain a case that went through courts, and we used it in our training a lot, and that's about a woman who alleged she slipped over outside the freezer area of a supermarket. There's no doubt she'd gone over because she'd had a laminectomy. That's where you take a piece of bone from somewhere else in your body and fuse to vertebrae together. So I turned up with her shoe, a kilogram weight and a spring balance trying to work out how slippery the floor was. So I parked the kilogram weight on her leather sold shoe on a line of floor and I drag it around the floor working out the coefficient of friction - static dry, static and dynamic, wet and dry - and work out whether the floor was slippery or not. As I have mentioned, if you want to feel like a bit of a goose in a public place, I could recommend putting a kilogram weight on a woman's shoe and drag it around the floor.

Gaye Francis (02:10):

You get some weird looks.

Richard Robinson (02:11):

You get some weird looks. Anyway, I got a good result. So I then trotted over the management, said, guys, what happens if you get a spill? And they said, oh, we've trained our people. If we see a spill, we put up those plastic posts and tape and we block it off and we're out there with buckets and mops and we don't take the tapes down and the poles away and until the floor's back in pristine condition. So I had to go back to this woman and say, look, so far as I can tell, there is nothing which this supermarket has failed to do, which will (lead to) you slip, fall, and injury. Tell me again what happened. She said, well, actually it's quite interesting actually. I actually fell forward. I said, well, that's interesting because the comedians have got it right. If you step on a banana skin, you'll tend to fall on your back, but if you trip, you'll tend to fall forward.

(02:53):

So I said, it sounds like a trip. So I tried it back to where she said she'd fallen over and precisely where she said she'd fallen over, there was a little access hatch in the lino floor with a little bronze lip around the edge, and it had a sort of a lip of a few millimeters and she was wearing strapless sandals. So I reckon what had happened, she'd been walking in the supermarket for 15 minutes. As she walked over this little hatch, the heel caught on the back of the hatch, which stopped her foot, which means she fell forward.

(03:21):

So what this means in causation terms, if she sues the supermarket because the floor was slippery, which led to her slip, fall injury, then I don't think it's the case to answer. But if she sues the supermarket for her trip, fall and injury because they failed to maintain the floor in level condition, I think there is a case to answer. And that's why causation is so critical to the courts. If you can't satisfy causation, you've got troubles.

Gaye Francis (03:45):

We haven't got a case to start with.

Richard Robinson (03:48):

So then a little while later we got another case, the Supreme Court of Victoria, and they were fretting about the impact of rolling blackouts if we had a strike in the Latrobe Valley with the power supplies and things like that. And the problem you've got here is that, I mean, we know from a memory with the blackout in South Australia, all these dreadful things happened, but that was after a windstorm blew over all the towers. And the problem you have is that you don't know... You can say that the bloodbank went wrong and a whole lot of invitro samples died and a whole number of other things. People got trapped in trains and lifts and all these other things like that. But you don't actually know predictively in advance which one of these things would actually happen. So you sort of have to start doing a probabilistic thing. The problem you normally have is if there's a storm and the power goes off, you can't say that somebody didn't make it to hospital just because the lights were out, because often there's a flood on the road or a tree across the road and that blocks things up. So you can't separate out what's the actual cause.

Gaye Francis (04:42):

There's a number of mechanisms that all add to it.

Richard Robinson (04:45):

Now, as it turned out, after a bit of scrambling around, we actually did find a way forward, and that was that we found there was, they called a blue sky blackout in New York about, I don't know, 2008 or something like that. And there was no storm. For various reasons the network failed and the power went off for 24 hours, something like that. And all the things that we've talked about went wrong. People got stuck in lifts, subway tubes, pharmacies lost their freezers, people couldn't get their prescriptions. All sorts of things went wrong. But because it was a blue sky one, you can actually adopt an epidemiological view. You didn't have to know what happened. You say, look, what was the increase in mortality because of that event? Because that's what epidemiologists do. And the study we were reading was by epidemiologists.

Gaye Francis (05:29):

Right.

Richard Robinson (05:30):

Now what that means though, you're taking a probabilistic view of the way things behave. You don't know, like the woman who slipped over because of this, you failed to maintain the floor and level condition, trip, fall injury. You can only say, oh, I think there might be a percentage increase of this in the same circumstance for a similar city. Now, Melbourne's not as dense or as high rise as (New York), so what factors are important? Now, the reason why this gets particularly complicated is because you start getting into this probabilistic... The first model we talked about was Newtonian. Now there's a causal link and a time sequence and events in series with a predictive model like an epidemiological model. You can't say that's the case. I mean, that's part of the problem with the covid work. You could do these mathematical models, but you can't say that's definitely what's going to happen. There was never that nice crisp connection.

Gaye Francis (06:22):

No, there were too many mechanisms that led to all of the consequences that came out of it.

Richard Robinson (06:27):

Correct. And that's why Schrodinger cat popped up of everybody heard about that popular culture. But basically what it was talking about was the fact that when you start talking about atomic decay and things like that, you can't predict it. You can put a probability number on it, but you can't say in the next half hour that this one thing will happen. I mean, the way Schrodinger cat worked, it was sort of a thought experiment of a, I thought, a pretty robust sort. Basically you put a cat in a box of the poison container and with a radioactive source of some sort, and if there's a certain decay in that radioactive source, it'll set the poison off and kill the cat. And so you don't know in the next... if you put it in there for an hour, but you can't say whether that event will happen or not.

(07:09):

You dunno whether the cat's dead or alive. And the only way to find that is to open the box up to have a look, which I said I thought was always fairly macabre sort of example. But everybody kept talking about it. So that's what you do.

(07:21):

Now, you can see from the point of view of the courts and the possibility of causation that if you say everything is strictly probabilistic in nature, that things don't happen because there's a causal link to which you can assign liability or responsibility. How can a court make a decision? You're in a very difficult situation. Now, obviously in the case of the Supreme Court we were doing here, we could actually say the mortality basically in New York increased by about 30% during that blackout. And if you know what the mortality figures in Melbourne are, obviously we're different city, but you could say as a first cut, quick and dirty, but it's still a pretty rubbery first cut.

Gaye Francis (08:01):

There's not a direct link between the two events.

Richard Robinson (08:04):

You can't say 'if this, then that'. You don't get... Remember, common law is done on the balance of probabilities. Well, that's really hard to show. And if you start talking about beyond reasonable doubt, I do not see how a probabilistic basis of causation could help a court at all.

Gaye Francis (08:23):

So going forward with the way that information is at the moment and the reliability of that, the courts are still relying heavily on the experts to get it right?

Richard Robinson (08:35):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (08:37):

And there's a lot of information out there, and I don't know about you. Sometimes I read some things and I'm like, oh, can that quite be true? But how do the courts deal with this way in thinking and this vast amount of information that's coming out our way when they're making those sort of decisions?

Richard Robinson (08:59):

Well, obviously it depends on your experts, and that's why, I mean ,the courts are very clear that they want the experts to be expert. You were talking about that other example which we use in the court where a...

Gaye Francis (09:14):

Storeman hurt his back.

Richard Robinson (09:15):

Yeah. Tipping up a drum, a 44 gallon drum, which was lying on the side. And then the lower court took the advice of an orthopedic surgeon that if you've got a 400 or 200 kilogram drum lying on the side, that's a 200 kilogram lift to tip it vertical. Well, no, it's a simply supported object. And so it's a 200 kilogram. It's 100 kilograms at either end. So it's a one hundred kilogram lift to raise it up, which decreases as you bring it up. Well, it took the high court of Australia to work that out after two Supreme Court appeals. Now when that was because the data that went into the first trial judge who was not a physicist, obviously, and I'm still not too clear how the high court became aware of this distinction, but if you get a bad input, you'll get a bad output. And that's the advice we got from Engineers Australia. I assume that they've got... their lawyers are good in that. What's a fact between sensible and smart? Is it what actually happened? No, most emphatically not. At best, it's what the trial court, the trial judge or jury thinks happened. But the trial court or the trial court may be hopeless and incorrect, but that doesn't matter legally speaking because you've got to remember, the reason why we have courts isn't so much to get it right, is to make sure we stop escalating events.

Gaye Francis (10:31):

It's about due process.

Richard Robinson (10:33):

It's due process, and getting a decision. At one level, it's more important to have due process than a decision we can live with rather than actually getting it right. Although that would offend an awful lot of people I know.

Gaye Francis (10:45):

I think it's an interesting space and especially the way the world's going. As you said, there's a whole lot of different ways that you can think about information and that traditional way of causation with almost a linear understanding of events. I think more and more events are becoming more complex and there's less events that are just being able to be shown linearly.

Richard Robinson (11:10):

Well, you might remember the maritime rules of the road, and we've talked to a lot of master Mariners about these things at different times, and we've been told a couple of times, the only reason why those rules of the road exist is so they can assign liability after the event. If you can't stay away from each other in big ships...

Gaye Francis (11:27):

You've got more problems...

Richard Robinson (11:27):

...more problems than that. But after it's all gone wrong and somebody's sunk and the people have been drowned, you need a way to make a decision. And so you have these rules, which more about making decisions than hindsight, sometimes, than they're about preventing things from occurring in the first place, which speaking as due diligent engineers, we find a frustration.

Gaye Francis (11:48):

I think you'd say that with a lot of the rules and policies and regulations that are around, it's about assigning a liability after the fact.

Richard Robinson (11:56):

It's like Sydney Decca's line: There's now so more safety rules out there that nobody, at least of all the people doing their job knows what they are. So what the heck are they for? And a lot of the time you've got to say, oh, it's so if it all goes wrong. You should have known, even if you didn't.

Gaye Francis (12:12):

I think that's probably a space that's becoming more and more, it's a liability. The due diligence stuff that we're doing is becoming more a liability management exercise rather than a safety improvement exercise.

Richard Robinson (12:29):

I think that was always the case, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (12:32):

I was optimistic that it wasn't, but I think liability is something that we'll just talk more about in this podcast season. So thanks Richard for the podcast today and nice talking to you. Will you hope to see you next time?

Richard Robinson (12:48):

Thanks, Gaye

Major IT Outage - Criticality & Resilience

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Special Episode

In this special episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the recent IT outage (July 2024) that affected systems worldwide and the importance of criticality and resilience. 

Main take-aways include:

• The outage was predictable and foreseeable. It was a critical incident.

• You can't gold plate a single system so that it won't fail. 

• The importance of redundancy – ensuring you've got another independent system that doesn't rely on the primary system.

• Engineering organisations are required to look at the credible worst case scenarios that can happen and what you can do and put in place to make sure that they're managed

• You need to positively demonstrate due diligence about what you're doing. And due diligence means that you take into account the credible critical issues. 

• When doing these reviews, you have to talk with the senior decision makers, who understand the business’ critical requirements.

The book referred to is Due Diligence Engineering and can be purchased online.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. Following Friday's, major IT outage that affected systems around the world, we thought we'd bring you this special episode with due diligence engineers, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis, discussing the importance of criticality and resilience.

(00:20):

If you enjoy the episode and our podcast help spread our work by sharing, rating and subscribing. And watch out for season four, which will be coming soon. Enjoy the episode.

Gaye Francis (00:32):

Hi Richard. Welcome to a special podcast session today.

Richard Robinson (00:36):

Yeah, it's quite remarkable we're actually here (in Melbourne) because we were in the air when that recent IT debacle occurred.

Gaye Francis (00:41):

We were. So we thought we'd do a podcast on the recent IT failure that affected so many systems in Australia and around the world and just the way that it relates to criticality and resilience.

Richard Robinson (00:58):

Yeah, and basically this is something we talk about all the time and our book (Due Diligence Engineers, R2A text) actually speaks about it at some length and we understand the professor of engineering at RMIT was basically going through it again, because people were asking if it was just an accident and we were sort of going; not really, it was predictable and should have been managed and they should have and could have done more than they did.

Gaye Francis (01:17):

So even though it was a low likelihood event, the consequences associated with it were huge and that can be seen around the world with all the implications that it had. So again, it's that criticality argument rather than risk argument. So yes, it may not have been likely, but if it did happen, the consequences were huge.

Richard Robinson (01:39):

And an awful lot of this from our point of view comes down to the finance side of things because organisations are always trying to optimise return. And so what they try to do is push up the greatest availability at least cost. Now the problem with that, of course, is that the world, if you're relying on a single system, you can't gold plate a single system so that it won't fail. So if you're down to one system and it fails, then you must have a backup.

(02:03):

Now, we see this all the time in the electrical business because the economic regulators for the energy business sort of say, look, we want you to have cheap power. And so what they do is they drive, they get rid of the headroom basically in the network so that yes, you are using your assets at an optimum utility. So you're getting sort of the maximum value out of what you've spent on the resources. But there's no resilience in the sense that in the electrical business they talk about N minus one failures. And the intention is that if a single failure happens, like one transmission fails, the network shouldn't care. It should just take over. But that means you've got to have a surplus capacity to achieve that outcome. And obviously that's not an economic thing to do.

Gaye Francis (02:43):

So we're talking about not only resilience and where we sort of talk about the hardening of the network and some of that gold plating stuff, but it's also the redundancy, isn't it? Making sure that you've got another independent system that doesn't rely on the primary system, that in the event that does fail, that you've got some sort of backup.

Richard Robinson (03:03):

Correct. And there's lots of different ways to do it. And as we hammer in the book, you can't gold plate a single system. You just can't stop all single points of failure. And the only way to get high availability at low cost is have two redundant systems in parallel. Now they don't have to be fully redundant and all the other things that you do, but if you don't actually analyse the system like that and that's what an engineering process will do for you, then you really don't know what's going to happen when it all goes wrong.

Gaye Francis (03:31):

So I think there's a couple of lessons learned out of this. IT debacle from last week is that it was absolutely foreseeable, it wasn't an accident. And engineering organisations are required to look at those credible worst case scenarios that can happen and what you can do and put in place to make sure that they're managed at that time. So I think it was a bit of a cop out if they're saying in the news that it was an accident and it couldn't have been seen because systems fail all the time.

(04:04):

I think one of the other interesting things that we've talked around the office this morning was how as a society we've come to rely on technology and electronic everything and that people didn't know what to do. I think that threw it into more chaos. We were actually just talking, Richard and I were in New Zealand last week and all the things that you had to have and you actually had to have an electronic ticket to get on the plane. So if you didn't have an iPhone or a Samsung or something, paper tickets are becoming rarer and rarer. And to juggle your phone and your passport and your baggage and all that sort of stuff.

Richard Robinson (04:42):

I watched you do that. It wasn't a great success.

Gaye Francis (04:45):

I felt like the little old lady, but that's okay. What I was saying is technology's supposed to make things easier, but sometimes it doesn't when all of those things you have to have the different access to different things on your phone at the same time.

Richard Robinson (05:01):

Well, I mean the way it's gone is, and it's like the IT giant stores, there's about five of them out there these days, and they've just dominated everything. But as a small organisation, we've actually gone to a lot of trouble to deconnect ourselves to those things. So we are not online all the time and it's the only way we can guarantee security because basically if you want to be secured, don't be online. I mean it's like you try to stop your kids getting online. I think you might not be successful in the long run, but basically if you don't want your information out there, don't be online.

(05:31):

It's the whole point of the WHS legislature for that is as you eliminate, if you can, you can't eliminate, then you reduce. People aren't testing the elimination option like they ought to be. And I don't fully understand quite why that's the case.

Gaye Francis (05:49):

I've had an absolute brain blank.

Richard Robinson (05:52):

Well that's not constructive, Gaye! So where would you like to land this thing? I think our point about this is that you need to positively demonstrate due diligence about what you're doing. And due diligence means that you take into account the credible critical issues. I mean, it might be reasonable to say a meteorite strike can turn up, but we're not going to worry about it because there's not an awful lot we can do about if it does happen.

Gaye Francis (06:14):

So what you're saying is you look at the credible worst case scenarios, but then also what the controls that you can put in place are. And I think that's where people are missing is they're not actually looking for those additional things that can be done.

Richard Robinson (06:27):

Well, you might remember those reviews we did for the bank a while back and we came across, there was another big consulting firm doing a bottom up availability assessment of what the bank backup systems were. And we came in top down. And I remember talking to the senior guy at the backup center and I was asking questions, is there any particular time when it's more important for the bank to be online than other times during the day? He said, oh yes, there's two times. There's one about 12 at midnight where we balance up between all the other banks. He said if we're not online at that particular half hour or so, and it's all done very quickly, but if we're not online then our books are out of balance for the whole of the next day. He said that causes an awful lot of trouble. So for that window, we want to definitely be online.

(07:08):

He said, the rest of the time we write all the data to two different sites, we can rerun the whole thing. Maybe people get bumped off for half an hour or an hour or something like that, but the system will recover because we've got two genuinely independent sites, two genuinely independent processes, and we write the data to both sites. It's not a problem. I mean there will be some inconvenience, but we have redundancy, he said. But at that particular window for that half hour in the day, we don't have redundancy for that one if we either hit it or we miss it

Gaye Francis (07:38):

And we must be online for it. I think that's another interesting point, isn't it? When you're doing these sort of reviews, you really do have to appeal to the people that live and die by it and they have to understand their business and those critical requirements of their business to be able to say what's credible and critical, worst case scenario sort of stuff.

Richard Robinson (07:59):

And that's the senior decision makers. Now sometimes they don't fully understand just what the criticalities are and perhaps that sometimes are a little bit upset to find people like us asking these sorts of questions. But if you don't ask them, you really don't find out. And what's funny about that was I said, this other firm, which once upon a time I used to work for doing this bottom up review when we were sort of comparing notes between what we were doing, it wasn't that either of us were wrong, both provide insight, but which was the more important one for that particular task. It was the criticality question, not the average availability.

Gaye Francis (08:36):

I think even some of the work that we've just done recently and that context is all important, isn't it? We were doing a review last week and to actually set the context of where they wanted to go was the most important part because that then gives you insight into the criticality and often you've got to expand the context to a higher level to get that understanding.

Richard Robinson (09:00):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (09:01):

So I guess as a wrap up from our viewpoint, the IT incident last week was definitely not an accident. It was predictable and foreseeable, in our terms. It was a critical incident. Yes, it may not have been likely, but the consequences were huge that you would've expect a large organisation to have backup processes. And even if it hadn't have been the source to have the backup processes, the people that relied on the system should have understood that criticality as well and had systems in place to deal with it.

Richard Robinson (09:45):

Indeed.

Gaye Francis (09:46):

So thanks for joining us, we'll see you next time.

Criticality & Design and Climate Change Design Options (Season 3 Wrap)

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 3, Episode 10

In the final episode of Season 3, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the theme of criticality and design in the context of climate change and sustainability due diligence. 

They discuss:

• The consequences of redirecting rivers for irrigation, 

• Why the Victorian Government built the, to now, unused desalination plant, and argue if they should be considering the potential impacts of global warming,

• Three possible design solutions: Sun shields, increasing cloudiness, and fertilising the Southern Ocean to address climate change, and

• How knowledge, technology and costs of design solutions are constantly changing. 

The textbook where the three design solutions are highlighted is R2A’s Engineering Due Diligence which you can purchase online.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this last episode of season three, due diligence engineers, Richard Roberson and Gaye Francis wrap up the season that's had a theme on criticality and design and discuss it in the context of climate change and sustainability due diligence.

(00:21):

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, get in touch via admin@r2a.com au. And look out for season four.

Gaye Francis (00:39):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session. Today we're actually wrapping up season three.

Richard Robinson (00:46):

Yeah, it's our 30th (episode), which is a bit of a surprise to both of us.

Gaye Francis (00:50):

It is. There've been some interesting topics along the way, some good sessions recorded. But we're just reflecting on what we've sort of covered in season three and there's been a real commonality of thread, throughout many of the sessions this season. And that's on criticality and design. And we've, as many of you who have listened to us before, Richard and I, I've been against risk assessment for many, many years. The appreciation of consequence and likelihood. And so I've always focused on that criticality. But I think bringing in the design element this season, what are the credible critical issues and then what can you do to address these? And the way that we thought we'd sort of wrap up this season was by giving an example on climate change or a sustainability due diligence example that we've written up in our (Engineering Due Diligence) textbook. So we think that sort of brings all of this together quite nicely.

Richard Robinson (01:49):

Yeah, we have two examples in there. The first was the Aral Sea, which during in the Soviet Union days, they decided to actually take the two rivers that kept the Aral Sea full and redirect them for irrigation to grow cotton, sort of a bit like the Murray Darling basin and growing cotton there, because cotton's a very water hungry crop. And the consequence of this was: Yes, it worked really well. Yes, they did grow a lot of cotton, but the consequence was the water and the rivers got used up, or one of them at any rate, and the Aral Sea basically dried out, which basically was an inland sea which affected a substantial area, it protected the desert and did all sorts of good things for the local community. And there was an awful lot of fishing going on and once obviously it dries up, no more fish and all those consequence flowed.

(02:34):

So that was just sort of an observation about criticality and failure to take the sort of test of foreseeability in what you might reasonably expect it to do something about it.

(02:43):

But the one that is a more larger scale, one is issue of global warming. Now climate change is a sort of one of those topics that everyone can get excited about. But if you just look at the CSIRO studies of seas around Australia in the last hundred years, it's increased by about a degree. What was never clear to me, I've got to say, whether it's global (warming), the climate's changes all the time. We used to have ice ages, so I never quite understood why people seem to think the climate in some way is fixed. Nobody's arguing over 10,000 years ago we had an ice age and we're apparently in a fairly warm period, but the climate continues to change and there are other things that affect it.

(03:15):

For example, when Krakatoa blew up, so far as they can tell, it reduced the temperature of the planet by about 1.2 degrees for a couple of years because the increased dust in the atmosphere just reflected more sunlight back. So the place cooled down. Although rely on Krakatoa to cool the planet or another event like that, is possibly not the way to manage things.

Gaye Francis (03:32):

Probably not. I think there'd be some better design solutions.

Richard Robinson (03:35):

And the example we give in the book. You've taken a criticality viewpoint, if it goes up by two degrees, everyone sort of says the water will rise by another half a meter or something like that, which perhaps won't be too bad. But after a couple of degree warming, nobody is really too sure what happens next. Because there have been times in planetary history where that occurs.

(03:54):

And then something like the Greenland ice sheet could melt, which would raise the water level something like seven meters. Now seven meter sea level increase in Melbourne for example would be serious. Now this is a critical issue and it's clearly credible. How likely it is? Got no idea. It's certainly possible. The temperature's increasing. It's certainly possible. But other things could happen. I mean, as I said, if another Krakatoa goes off the planet will suddenly cool. In fact, one of the articles I remember reading in the 1970s, pollution was so high it actually was cooling the planet because the particles in the air, and part of the problem we've had is actually cleaning the environment up! Which is sort of one of those reverse arguments that you don't really want to hear too much about.

(04:38):

But anyway, that actually leads on to say: Okay, it's a critical issue. If it happened, it would affect Melbourne, the capital of Victoria (Australia) violently. We've witnessed the cabinet in Victoria when we had a critical issue like the drought and the desalination plant. Just for record, we've got a desal plant in Victoria, it cost about $5.7b to build. It costs us $1.6 million a day and by the time we've finished paying it off, and if you're paying water rates in Melbourne, you will know about this. It's going to cost us about $25b when the time we've finished at the end of the procurement period. And we haven't taken any water from it. And you sort of got to go: Well, why do we have one of these things?

(05:19):

And the answer is it's a criticality driven argument. We had 10 years drought around Australia, particularly in Victoria, and this is around when they built the thing about 2010, if you come to a view as a cabinet that there's a credible possibility that if that 10 year drought continues, the drought continues another 10 years that a major Australian population center could actually run out of water, like what happened in South Africa, and you have the resource to fix it in some way, what will you do as a responsible cabinet?

(05:49):

The answer is you will put something in place to make sure it can't happen. A risk investment argument would say: Don't do it, it's not commercially viable.

Gaye Francis (05:59):

No. But the criticality and design...

Richard Robinson (06:02):

Basically says you have to do it.

(06:04):

So what happens if you apply the same argument the cabinet and the legislation says they're required to the possibility of Melbourne flooding due to global warming? The answer is what are the options that are available to you in a design term? The answer seems to be there are currently three possible options.

(06:21):

One is to put sun shields up at the Laggrangian L1 Point that's between the earth and the sun. It's a negative gravity point. NASA has costed this. It's in the trillions, Victoria can't afford it. Not going to happen.

Gaye Francis (06:37):

Probably not reasonable.

Richard Robinson (06:38):

The second option is to, and Cambridge University engineers have designed this, you squirt basically pollutants into the upper atmosphere to increase the albedo effect to reflect more sunlight away from the planet and cool it down that way. And for the most part it would just be lots more clouds because the whiter you can make it, it's like you'd be aware with snow that the dark spots collect the heat and therefore the dark spots grow where the sunlight gets reflected with the white snow. So if you increase the cloudiness of the planet, it'll reflect more heat into space. That would require putting balloons up and high pressure pumps. It's actually isn't that much water and it is actually entirely doable, but the cost is still in the multi biillion level. And there's some trials fiddling around with people trying to see what are the best types of chemical. Water vapor seems to be a popular idea, but you might want to enhance that slightly.

(07:32):

The third one, which is the cheapest one, which frankly some idiot American already tried, is that in the southern ocean, which is close to where we are, around Antarctica, every year you get this giant upwelling of, with the weather changes and currents and so forth, you get this giant up welling of nutrients that encourages algae. The krill will turn up and consume the algae and then the whales turn up and consume the krill. And if you put more fertilizer into these areas, you could increase the algal bloom violently. As I said, some American actually already tried this. You just picked a piece of ocean went out there with a ship and chucked a whole load of fertilizers to see what would happen. And yes, it created an algal bloom. Wasn't a particularly scientific experiment and all the scientists actually recoiled in horror, but theoretically this would work.

(08:22):

Now the consequences are to actually put ship loads of stuff down there in the billions of dollars, it's in the range, same range of costs as the desal plant. Now when you spend 5 billion on chucking fertilizer into the Southern ocean at different points to see what would happen, it will increase the algae, undoubtedly, that will increase the krill and the further consequence presumably would be fat whales. But these are one of the logical consequences of the argument. But this is actually something Victoria could afford and would change the climate because it would create a carbon sink and pull by the dead algae, the krill wouldn't consume at all. And imagine the whales, unless they breed their population that fast, couldn't consume all the krill, so all that would sink into the very cold ocean and it would just become a carbon sink. Now that would reduce the human impact of carbon. If the climate is changing naturally, which it likely is anyway, it obviously won't reduce that component. So there's some delicate balances that would have to go on here. And if you were going to do this, I'd seriously recommend some validation and verification of the entire process because if you did happen to send the climate into a total flip it so it went into an ice age, that would be frowned upon.

Gaye Francis (09:38):

Yes. It probably wouldn't be the success that you wanted it to be. <laughs>

(09:44):

So by using that example, I think Richard's shown that it really is about the criticality and the design options that you could put forward to test for reasonableness. And those design options are changing.

Richard Robinson (09:56):

Every day.

Gaye Francis (09:57):

Every day. We are just reflecting on how quickly a society's changing, but also the...

Richard Robinson (10:03):

The costing of the putting up the sunshades to cool the planet, you'd have these spinning discs of things, that was when Elon Musk didn't have SpaceX, and if he actually gets his big spaceship going, that cost of that activity would probably decline by order of magnitude compared to what NASA's original estimates were. So that just gives you an idea of how fast all this is changing.

Gaye Francis (10:28):

So 10 years maximum, these things have changed. So the options are available going forward are changing as well. But also the cost and the reasonableness, how easy things are to do is also changing. And I'm sure we've used this example many times about the personal pilotage units for pilots on big vessels. 15 years ago they were big, heavy, almost bricks, weren't they? Big laptops and required their own backpack. Whereas now it's tablet size, iPhone size, and as Richard says, the capability of all of this technology is also increasing.

Richard Robinson (11:10):

Well, particularly once you start throwing AI into the mix the way and the monitoring capability - I can't remember if we said in the last episode, I was just talking to my GP and he just the AI is better at diagnosing from CAT scans now than medical specialists are. And that only happened the last couple of years, just like that.

Gaye Francis (11:32):

And I think that introduction of robotics and AI is something that we're going to have to consider as engineers going forward and what space they can play on, what role they can play in the safety space in particular, but that might be a podcast for next season.

Richard Robinson (11:46):

The dangers of AI, another podcast, and the intellectual understanding of it would actually be useful. The idea that I'm going to have the opportunity to explain to Gaye what a collapsing wave function is and what Schrodinger's cat is all about, is one of the more interesting things to look forward to.

Gaye Francis (12:02):

Yes, I've been working with Richard for over 20 years and sometimes I still have to ask him to repeat himself on a number of occasions to figure out what he's talking about! But that's okay.

(12:14):

So I think that was sort of where we wanted to leave season three. Hopefully we've brought it all together, but the key takeouts from this is really that focus on criticality and design. Next season, season four, we are looking at probably doing some, or we'd like to do some sessions that are industry specific. So we're thinking dams, rail, aviation, possibly electrical networks and water dams maybe. But we'd love to hear any ideas that anyone else has got out there that they'd like to hear Richard and I have a little bit of a chat about for 10 minutes or so.

(12:53):

So thanks for joining us for season three. We hope you enjoyed it and hope you can join us for season four.

Richard Robinson (12:59):

Thanks, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (13:00):

Thanks Richard.

Town Planning Disasters: The need for consquence planning, not risk planning

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 9

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis, discuss town planning disasters and the need for consequence planning.  

This follows Gaye’s recent conference paper at the International Public Works Conference where she detailed the VCAT decision around the major hazard facility and the planning law associated with it. But in this podcast, they reflect on other natural hazards like floods, bushfires, dam breaks and how town planning can address (or fail to address) these before they happen.

The biggest question they ask is rather than a focus on recovery, why aren't we building resilience into our infrastructure and/or seeing how we, as a community, build to be able to withstand some of these disasters? And how this is a shift from thinking from risk planning to consequence planning. 

They also discuss the mismatch between town planning requirements and WHS/OHS legislation. 

Access the episode’s full transcrip below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Ep 9 (S3) of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss town planning disasters, especially in relation to natural hazards. We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, please email us at admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:31):

Hi Richard, welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:33):

Morning Gaye. How are you?

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Good, thank you. Today we thought we'd talk about, and we had a bit of an argument about what we were actually going to call this podcast, but we wanted to talk about town planning disasters, and it really leads on from the conference paper that I gave at the International Public Works Conference a couple of weeks ago (May 2024). And I think we've talked about that. That was really about the VCAT decision around the major hazard facility and the planning law associated with that. But we are sort of reflecting on that there's a number of natural hazards out there, floods, earthquake, fire.

Richard Robinson (01:08):

Bushfires. Dam break, that's not quite natural, but go on.

Gaye Francis (01:13):

And we are looking at how town planning can address these sort of things before they happen.

Richard Robinson (01:20):

 Or fail to (address). I think the point you're trying to make.

Gaye Francis (01:23):

And one of the key takeaways from the conference that I got was everybody was talking about "building back better", but there was also an interesting way that they were saying; we are focusing a lot on recovery from these incidents, but why aren't we building resilience into our infrastructure or seeing how we can as a community build to be able to withstand some of these disasters? And we sort of reflected on it because we've worked with bushfires over the years and we've worked with dam breaks and a number of other natural hazards, and it's always a very interesting discussion.

Richard Robinson (02:04):

That's correct. I mean, if you just take bushfires for example. I mean, one of the things that kind of frustrates us, I mean we've been working in that space for the last, well, for me since 1983 because I used to write papers on the Ash Wednesday fires. And one of the things, if you read Luke's "Bushfires in Australia", the guy from CSIRO, one of the weird things he sort of points out is that the bushfire and the party at risk changes as the city grows. So in the 1930s, the bushfire risk was Sandringham in Melbourne; in the 1970s, it was in the Dandenongs and Eltham and places like that; and then as the city kept growing, which is what happened in 2009/2010, it was King's Lake and Marysville where a whole lot further people had moved further out. And the point was people wanted to move into the bush, they want to enjoy it, they want the kangaroos and the birds and everything else. The dark side of all that though, of course, is that if the bushfire comes through, you're peculiarly at risk. And so it's all those peri-urban areas that are always at risk, and that was the case. And you can just see it as the different bushfires come through. The other frustration we had, and just to give you an for instance, I mean I remember writing papers in the, would've been 1985, I think, so before your time.

Gaye Francis (03:10):

Well before my time, Richard.

Richard Robinson (03:12):

Thank you, Gaye! Where we were sort of pointing out that... You see the way that Bushfires in Australia happen, you've got a hot northly coming down, so you've got skinny fires progressing south, however they started. And then the change comes through and you get the wind coming from the west and you get these huge bushfires. So whether it was just a skinny front coming south, if you haven't put it out by the time the change comes through, all of a sudden you've got a broad fire front coming from the west to the east. And if you're obviously fighting a fire on the downwind side, when the high winds come through on a very hot day, you're in serious trouble.

(03:43):

But from the point of view of town planning, the logical conclusion was you should put fire breaks to the north and west of the town. And a logically and simple way to do that from land use planning point of view is golf courses and potato patches and other things like that, which tend to be bare or don't have a huge growth on them during the bushfire season. Now that was done in 1985 - we were busy writing those sort of papers with my former business partner, Kevin Anderson. In fact, it was writing those papers, which got us together in the first place.

Gaye Francis (04:09):

So there's ideas and controls that you can put in place to mitigate or to almost prevent some of these natural disasters, well not prevent the natural disasters, but the consequences on urban areas.

Richard Robinson (04:22):

But it's consequence planning, not risk planning. You see, that's where they all went muddled. I mean, you might recall, and we're not going to go too much detail, but there's a number of councils who've let the houses be built up to the bottom of the toe of a dam. Either the water's higher than the roof of the house. Now if anything happens to the dam, those people are not well. Now how on earth the flood overlay from the dam wasn't somehow properly laid out so the town planners understood what the key hazards were? I simply do not understand. And that seems to pop up all over the place. I mean, the ones we're talking about were major hazards, which we talked about at length: dams, bushfires, airports. All these sorts of people create these overlays and for reasons that are obscure to us, well, maybe it's not, it's because they keep using the term risk rather than consequence. If you start looking at consequence modeling, it becomes pretty obvious just how bad this could be.

Gaye Francis (05:12):

But I also think there's been a huge mismatch and we're noticing that even more and more between the requirements of town planning, that seems to be a really insular solo siloed activity. And it's not taking into account all of the things. It's really just taking into account the town planning matters, and it's not taking in the Work Health and Safety (WHS) legislation or OHS legislation. It's not taking in some of those overlays that you would expect a community or town planning to have over it.

Richard Robinson (05:45):

Well, I think that's what got us stumped. I mean, we've mentioned this before. Victoria adopted the SFAIRP approach in 2004 with the OHS Act. So we've got our 20 years now because it's 2024, and that's sort of the time it takes to change. Most other jurisdictions only started this in 2011. They've got another 10 years before they get there. And we just sort of observed from discussion with a lawyer in another place, which we perhaps won't talk too much about, but that they were using the HIPAP guidelines for New South Wales still. Well, the HIPAP guidelines died when the WHS legislation became the legislation of major hazards and dangerous goods, which isn't the case in all jurisdictions. That's where it gets a bit messy, but in most jurisdictions, that's the case. And so using target levels of risk and safety and saying the risk consequence by likelihood is the way to do it, rather than just using consequence modeling, they're still doing it. And weirdly, because of the planning appeals process, if you're just planning according to planning legislation, you apparently can't invoke the WHS legislation, which seems to be overarching, I would have thought.

(06:47):

But engineers aren't allowed to address legal matters. You may recall.

Gaye Francis (06:51):

We were told to keep in our own box, yes, or own lane. But I think one of the frustrating things, and even talking to some of our associates about it is when you are dealing with earthquakes and bush fires, we know that there's controls that you can put in place.

Richard Robinson (07:09):

High consequences low likelihood events.

Gaye Francis (07:11):

And it's becoming more and more important for, let's say climate change. We know what the consequences of that are, and there are controls that we can put in place. So why aren't we just doing it rather than arguing about what the hazard's going to be?

Richard Robinson (07:25):

Because it's the commerciality of it. It's like when you go and sell your power network to private equity, private equity says we want maximum dollars. That means you optimise your network for the greatest efficiency. You don't optimise it for credible worst case scenarios. For example, the N -1. N -1 means if you lose a major power conductor somewhere, the grid should just be able to hold up with that single failure. Okay? N -2, you start expecting blackouts of some sort, but an N -1 failure, everything should keep going. But that costs more. If you're just going for cost effectiveness for a rare event, and it's outside the investment horizon. This is where the energy regulator, the Australian economic regulator, it's unfortunately they call themselves the energy regulator, because basically anything outside the five year investment horizon pretty much gets sort of kiboshed, anything that's going to go wrong after that, you just buy insurance. Well, that doesn't stop the consequence. Buying insurance tries to repair the damage, which is your point. It doesn't actually prevent the problem from occurring in the first place. And it does seem to me that... Well, we had that conversation. I think it's the difference between stakeholder equity and private equity. Private equity just wants profit, doesn't care how it's made, and it would use a risk-based approach. Whereas stakeholder equity says, we want you to plan for disasters and make the place resilient.

Gaye Francis (08:46):

And I think that would give councils a lot more tools and you would see a different type of build-set and the location of things in town planning matters.

Richard Robinson (08:56):

Well, even the developers, if they were sort of forced. And in a sense, the WHS legislation forces that because you have to consider your neighbours. That's the intention of it.

Gaye Francis (09:05):

That is the intention. I haven't seen it in practice very often though.

Richard Robinson (09:08):

Not from a developer. No.

Gaye Francis (09:11):

No. And that makes it really tricky. I mean, even I can use the example of my sister lives in a bushfire zone and they're in a newer estate...

Richard Robinson (09:21):

Bushfire overlay zone.

Gaye Francis (09:22):

.. overlay zone, and one of the optional extras when they were building a house was to put tanks and fire resistant materials on and things like that. And some of them were compulsory, but others were optional extras. And when you're in those zone, maybe these things don't have to be optional extras. Maybe they are just a minimum level of protection that's required in those areas.

Richard Robinson (09:46):

Well, that's what, that's in theory what they do. But the point, as we've went through in one of the previous podcasts, that standards are the minimum, rhey're not recognised good practice. And I think that's part of the problem everybody's got. If you're designed to a standard, it will almost certainly be substandard, in effect, because there'll be twiddling with the rules to try and get some kind of deem to comply outcome, and it just doesn't work. But that's from our point of view, there's a failure to design and town planning should be the high level design process, and it's not. What it's come down to is a series of legislative or case law rules about: if you do this, you'll thread it through the legal eye of the needle, and if you do it this way, you won't. So that's what happens.

Gaye Francis (10:30):

Well, they're almost doing it as a compliance, aren't they? It's a compliance audit that if you meet the requirements of X, Y, Z, then tick, you get your planning approval, doesn't make sure that the building being approved is the best that it could be for the issues that it may have to face.

Richard Robinson (10:48):

It certainly doesn't assure that all reasonable practicable controls are in place, which is the purpose of all the WHS/OHS legislation out there.

Gaye Francis (10:56):

And I think that's really important going forward, because I think we all will all have an understanding that with climate change, some of these natural disasters and events are going to become more likely and more severe and going forward, we can't keep doing it the way that we've been doing it.

Richard Robinson (11:14):

It's not human nature though. We like disasters.

Gaye Francis (11:19):

<laighs> Okay, I might not be in that group.

Richard Robinson (11:22):

You're speaking as a mother.

Gaye Francis (11:25):

So I think the due diligence approach is the way to do it, and we know what the consequences are, and we know that controls can be put in place. So let's just make it basic.

Richard Robinson (11:35):

Not only just controls put in there (that are) reasonable, and if you do it at a planning stage, it's very cost effective. It's not expensive. I think that's what frustrates us the most, and that's what actually what frustrates the courts after the event, it all goes horribly wrong and in hindsight, it turned out, yep, there was a cost effective solution that could have been in place, which had it been in place, would've saved the day. And the question is, why it wasn't, and I've got to say the way it's going, it was because of the way we go about town planning.

Gaye Francis (12:02):

So I think town planning has to come out of its silo and have that broader strategic view on things as a community.

Richard Robinson (12:10):

But they consider themselves strategic already. That's what's weird about it.

Gaye Francis (12:14):

Okay. That hasn't been our experience, but we might leave it at that, Richard! Thanks for joining us today. Hope you found that interesting, and we'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (12:25):

Thanks.

How Standards stifle innovation

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 3, Episode 8

In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis from R2A discuss how standards stifle innovation. 

They highlight the frustration of engineers who are designing to standards rather than focusing on solving the actual problem at hand. They argue that standards are often lag indicators and may not keep up with the rapidly changing world and provide examples of how standards can lead to shortcuts being taken and hinder the adoption of new technologies. 

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss how standards stifle innovation. We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Get in touch via admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:29):

Hi Richard, welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:32):

Hello Gaye. We're back again.

Gaye Francis (00:33):

We are. Today we're going to talk about one of the things that gets us both a little bit riled up, and that's standards stifle innovation.

Richard Robinson (00:45):

Every time.

Gaye Francis (00:47):

And I guess this comes from a number of comments and questions we've been asked by chief engineers in organisations that engineers are designing to standards rather than looking at what the issue of concern is and designing to solve that problem, which is what engineers should do.

Richard Robinson (01:06):

Correct. And the standards come second, not first.

Gaye Francis (01:10):

So there's a lot of frustrations out there with technical based organisations and chief engineers that engineers are only designing to standards, not actually thinking through the application. It manifests itself in a number of different ways and difficulties arise because of it. And one of the things that we were just talking about is that standards are lag indicators. They've usually done retrospectively after something's happened.

Richard Robinson (01:36):

And you want to make sure that after you design something that you have certainly met what the standards demand. But normally that's the lowest possible framework, not where you ought to be, not what recognised good practice is.

Gaye Francis (01:50):

And the other difficulty, I think, is that the world is changing so fast and the standards aren't keeping up with that. And so sometimes standards are being applied to applications that are not relevant or haven't been considered by the standard. And that makes it difficult as well.

Richard Robinson (02:08):

Yeah. Well that keeps popping up. In my role as a chairman of an Owners Corporation with 271 apartments, it was done originally and renovated in at least in 1997, something like that, and a lot of the fire protection standards were actually substandard compared to what things are now. But I knew that at the time. I mean, I bought in to the apartments about 10 years later, but I was aware as a fire engineer at the time what the deficiencies were and what recognised good practice and the North American codes were. And so we have this horrible situation, the Australian Sprinkler Standard, for example, didn't demand a sprinkler for the bathrooms, which is just common sense that if you're going to sprinkle the place, you do it everywhere. But if you're just designed to a standard, you don't!

Gaye Francis (02:46):

It didn't have a requirement, so it wasn't done.

Richard Robinson (02:50):

It wasn't done.

Gaye Francis (02:51):

So I mean, shortcuts in a way are being taken. And I think the WHS/OHS legislation has changed that to a degree.

Richard Robinson (02:57):

To a degree, but people still aren't thinking it through.

Gaye Francis (03:00):

No, that's correct. And so today we thought we'd go through a couple of examples just to show why standards are lagging and they stifle innovation. And that probably gives the best example of what we're talking about.

Richard Robinson (03:14):

And we are talking about design standards more than anything else. I think we might've used this example somewhere else, but it actually, because of the technology's been moving along so fast, it actually become more and more relevant. Now, you'd be aware that the bane of electrical regulators in Australia is the home handyman, getting in the roof space fiddling with the wires and doing themselves in electrically. And you might recall we had a royal commission into installing installation where a young guy just basically stapled through the metal installation into the 240 volt wires and that was the end of them. Now this has been a pain. Now, even now, if somebody's building a house, what they're most likely to do is build it to AS 3000, which is, I've got to say, as standards go is one of the more authoritative ways of doing things. But it doesn't address particularly the issue of 240 volts in the roof space.

(04:01):

Now, this matter has been going on for some time. But the most recent design approach, particularly in industry, is to put power over ethernet to luminaires. And you can now get 25 watts, which is a very bright LED at 48 volts through power of ethernet. And because of all the other efficiencies and energy savings and so forth going on, monitoring every light fitting has become a sort of a trendy thing to do. Now if you wire a new house up with 48 volts, which is extra low voltage wiring, there's no possibility of somebody getting killed just from stapling or hacking around up there, it's not going to happen. Is that in AS 3000? No, it's not. Is it required now by WHS and in Victoria, the OHS Act? Absolutely.

(04:45):

And so if you haven't designed a house now to take this into account and somebody subsequently gets killed up there with a 240 volts when it can be shown absolutely crystal clear for no increase in cost, you could have engineered this out, then you have failed the design test because you're designed to a standard.

Gaye Francis (05:02):

I think the difficulty is that people aren't thinking about it that way, are they? They're still thinking that designing to the standard covers them to do that sort of stuff. And that's what we mean by standards stifle innovation. They're actually not thinking over what could be done and why wouldn't you do it?

Richard Robinson (05:20):

Well, that's right, but it's an interesting thing because you can't legislate for creativity. It's not the way the world works. It just doesn't function like that.

Gaye Francis (05:30):

No, it doesn't.

Richard Robinson (05:31):

The other example which we had because we're kind of sensitive to it, was the Wallan incident where the train driver and train pilot got killed. Now, I think we might've mentioned this before that R2A was the functional safety assessor under IEC 61508 for how two trains who get past each other electronically and single line track in New South Wales. And they had a near miss. And we said you need a diverse or independent way of confirming where the train is rather than just relying on the train driver talking to train control. And the way to do that was to use a GPS function and to have basically a GPS watch dog, which was eventually implemented. Although at the time this was non-standard and because it was the first job you did and you did entirely test it to confirm that every intersection, every crossing loop and everything that happened in New South Wales, the watchdog would work for, which is how we confirmed that it was a robust idea. But then they had generally two independent ways of doing things.

(06:26):

Now because we do a fair bit of work in marine pilotage, and this is a paper you gave to the CORE Conference just recently, an example. The marine pilots now have, and this is technology that's been developed particularly in the last 20 years, what they refer to as a personal pilotage unit. And the idea is the marine pilot gets on board the ship and whacks their own laptop or iPad effectively these days at the center of the bridge and then paces out the wing bridge and sticks up a GPS Bluetooth GPS connection. And that means that the laptop knows these days with the way all the satellite systems are working out there. So you'll be using the Russian system, the American system, the Indian system, the Japanese system. There are so many damn satellites up there now telling you where you are that this laptop knows the nearest centimeter where it is without any particular difficulty.

(07:14):

And the reason for doing this is if the ship goes black or a swell turns up and you can't see anything because the wind screens just got water all over it and the radar's gone on the blink because the radar can't get through. The Marine pilot has a completely, a utterly independent navigation system, utterly independent of the entire ship telling where they are, how fast they're going, what direction they're heading, and all the other aspects. And this technology has become blindingly, reliable, very small and very efficient. It begs the question, why don't interstate trains have this more particularly, why doesn't a trained pilot who's particularly there to navigate through the different networks for the state have this kind of device? Because this would tell you, for example, and give you a live real time messages on the state of the track ahead of you, which is what happened because they were doing some work on the track.

(08:06):

And yes, they had been advised before they left Sydney that there was work happening on the track and they'd have to slow down to a 10 or 15km/hr and take the crossing loop around where the work site was at a slow speed. They didn't. They hit the train, hit the work site, basically at line speed and derailed and the train drive and the pilot got killed. We have a view that if you had one of these units similar to what the marine pilots have, that the train pilot, the driver would've completely independent knowledge of where they are utterly independent of train control and any onboard nav system. And this train pilotage system pilot system would also have an indication of all the track gangs, track work, and any works ahead of them that they'd be getting real time.

Gaye Francis (08:50):

Well, you could put a lot of information in it. Because it'd give you pure situational awareness, full situational awareness. And so if the track gang or another train was there, everything's identifiable now that all of that feeds into the system, that gives you a holistic picture of what's around.

Richard Robinson (09:08):

Well, what's one of the things, remember with the aviation sector, they've stopped using radar and they've gone to ADSP. And ADSP basically means that each aircraft is squittering where it is 10 times a second or 10 times a minute or whatever it is, and basically just reporting its GPS position and then the information's being fed back to all the other aircraft so they where are they are. Now there is no reason why a train couldn't have the same technology. The point we're making is that all these new technologies are emerging in other domains. They all have potential application to the train.

Gaye Francis (09:36):

Not necessarily just emerging, Richard, I think some of these technologies have been well and truly established.

Richard Robinson (09:41):

Well, yes, they've been well and truly established. They're robust and proven.

Gaye Francis (09:45):

Yes. And whether the application can be varied and expanded to a whole lot of other industries.

Richard Robinson (09:54):

Well, you might remember I asked at that conference just saying, I just asked one of the marine pilot guys, I think, I can't remember if he was Australian or Norwegian. He said, oh, what would a unit like this cost per train driver and if you had to sort of map where all the rail lines were so you could sort of cross connect where the position was and so forth, he just sort of said, well, it's probably to $3000 to $5,000 per unit and it's battery operating goes for 15 hours for each train driver. So that pretty much covers any rail trip in Australia. And he said for $50 million we'd fall over ourselves to do it for you. The entirety of Australia.

Gaye Francis (10:28):

There might've been a bit of a marketing PR in there as well.

Richard Robinson (10:32):

No, when I pushed him on the matter, we probably do it for $25M. <laughs>

Gaye Francis (10:37):

So what we're sort of saying is just because you designed to the standard doesn't mean that you satisfy the obligations. And we've said this a number of times in different podcasts, the obligations of WHS/OHS legislation, but it also stifles innovation. And I think that's where some of the chief engineers are getting really cranky at their engineers because they're saying, no, no, no. Look at what the problems are and what they currently are. What are the options that are available to address that issue? And then what is reasonable in the circumstances.

Richard Robinson (11:09):

And culturally, this is one of the things that absolutely drives us crackers with Engineers Australia because basically they're encouraging every engineer to give their intellectual property to Standards Australia for free with no recognition. They actually breach the code of ethics of Engineers Australia because in the North American standards, they make a point of listing the person, their organisation. Whereas in Standards Australia they just list an organisation. You don't know where the idea's come from. There's no way of testing them. And rather than Engineers Australia doing it, which is, if you want innovation where it ought to be, once you start pushing through a standards committee, you're toast.

Gaye Francis (11:45):

Yeah. Just stops that innovation altogether, doesn't it? So I guess there's a couple of, be careful as we end this podcast. Be careful that you're actually looking at what all the credible critical issues are and you're designing to make sure all reasonable practical precautions are in that. And when you take a standard, have a look to make sure that it still actually applies and is applicable to what you're doing. Because we've seen that as well, a standard being applied and the circumstance to which the standard is being applied isn't even considered by the standard.

Richard Robinson (12:18):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (12:18):

So you need to be really careful of that as well. So we hope you've found this podcast interesting. I'm sure this is one that we will explore in more detail and a number of other times. So thanks again for the chat, Richard.

Richard Robinson (12:32):

Thanks Gaye.

Risk Appetite versus Zero Harm & the Confusion at Board levels

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 7

In this podcast episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the concept of risk appetite versus zero harm and the confusion it creates at board levels because they're trying to put all of their risk issues into a single statement.

They discuss how a risk appetite is about balancing risk and reward, whereas zero harm is about nothing bad happening, and this gets uncomfortable when applying risk appetite to human safety. 

They outline the commonly applied risk paradigms and how a synthesis of risk appetite in commercial and safety practice does occur in project due diligence.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode’s transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss risk appetite versus zero harm. We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, email via admin@r2a.com au.

Gaye Francis (00:31):

Hi Richard. Welcome back to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:34):

Hello Gaye. Here we are again.

Gaye Francis (00:35):

We are. Today we're going to talk about probably something that I find one of the most interesting topics in our business, and that's risk appetite versus zero harm and the concepts of the two, and the confusion that it's creating at board levels because they're trying to put all of their risk issues into a single statement. And it sort of comes up as that risk appetite statement, doesn't it, at a board level. The easiest way probably to explain it is to maybe go through the three different risk paradigms that we see most commonly used, and then have a discussion around that and why the confusion exists.

Richard Robinson (01:16):

Yeah, because obviously just for the point of the confusion, if you say risk appetite, you've got to balance risk and reward on the one hand, whereas zero harm says nothing bad's going to happen. But when you start applying risk appetite to human safety, you sort of get an unpleasant feeling about the whole thing. And that's where the boards are getting this confusion.

(01:32):

Now, we've noticed this tension over the years in all sorts of places, and the way we normally explain it's to sort of go through these three paradigms or ways of thinking about risk. And we suspect there's more than these around in the risk business. We keep saying it's a multidimensional space, but these are the three. Now, when you talk about risk appetite, you're basically saying, look, we've got a certain course of action and it's got pluses and minuses, and if you've got multiple courses of action, you pick the one with the greatest pluses and the least minuses. That'd be a sensible thing to do. And in order to determine what that is, you start talking about risk appetite. And that's the way the commercial people talk about it because they're always talking about upside, downside risk, that that's the way they think.

(02:11):

When you start talking about zero harm, that's the safety people and the safety people are saying, we don't want bad things to happen! From a safety viewpoint, we just want to eliminate them. And we've had this conversation about if the police commissioner says our objectives to sort of stop all child molestation in this city, whilst most of us recognise that, that's probably aspirational, we certainly expect a police commissioner to have that general view on life and to do everything they can to try and achieve that zero harm outcome.

Gaye Francis (02:42):

Yes, he doesn't have a risk appetite for that.

Richard Robinson (02:45):

Does have a risk appetite for child abuse. And the idea that you're going to offset community resources, you're going to do everything you can, but your objective is zero harm. The two make an awful lot of good philosophical sense when you consider one in commercial practice and you present a one in safety practice.

(03:02):

The place where it's you get a synthesis, and we've sort of talked about this a number of times, is project due diligence, which is basically the essence of our text. Because if you have a hundred projects that your business is contemplating, you just systematically work through those looking at the upside and downside risk associated with each project. And if you can afford to do the top 10, you pick the ones with the greatest upside risk profile and the least downside risk profile just from a sensible commercial viewpoint. The trick is, of course, that when you actually start doing any particular project, you want the thing to go smoothly without any hitches or glitches. And that means you are basically saying you're promising the upside risk position. And you're saying from that upside risk position, you want a zero harm outcome. It'll be delivered on time, to budget, nobody gets hurt and all the other good things.

Gaye Francis (03:50):

It'll deliver what it's supposed to deliver.

Richard Robinson (03:53):

So from our point of view, that's when the two actually synthesize. But the rest of the time there's still this underlying confusion.

Gaye Francis (04:02):

And trying to put it into a single statement or a risk appetite statement at a board level for an organization trying to include all of those different elements. It doesn't quite make sense.

Richard Robinson (04:13):

And I've never quite understood it because I mean, historically, a lot of organisations used to split their commercial decisions and commercial risk management away from their safety decision and their safety risk management. And whilst I understand that the two overlap, to a point. I mean, one of the points of the WHS legislation, it basically doesn't say go and work out cost benefit for controls. It basically says, work out what can be done, and before you start thinking about costs, work out the possible practical control before you start thinking about costs and then consider the cost, secondly.

Gaye Francis (04:48):

Well, I mean the WHS legislation's really asking, why wouldn't you do something rather than creeping up on it and saying why you would do something.

Richard Robinson (04:57):

Correct. And you can see how the two ideas sort of dance around each other so far as we can tell. And when we make the remark that risk is this sort of complex space and you can cut it through in different ways. My actual guess is that probably what you need to do if it's a commercial matter, is cut it through the commercial risk assessment tools and if it's a safety risk matter, cut it through with a safety risk tools, which has a zero harm philosophy lurking in the background. And if it's project risk, well then you probably will be doing both.

Gaye Francis (05:27):

Yeah. I think the environmental factors, environmental organisations are getting more to the zero harm model. That's sort of the tendency. Victoria has changed their legislation to be so SFAIRP.

Richard Robinson (05:43):

But all the other legislative zones use the RIO principle, where there's serious environmental harm, you should do everything to postpone and prevent environmental degradation. I can't remember the exact words of the RIO convention off the cuff now, but it actually has the same general philosophy. You sort of say, if this is really bad, you've got to do everything you can to make sure it doesn't go wrong, and you figure out what can be done first and then you work out the costs second.

Gaye Francis (06:09):

So I guess there's two courses of actions that boards or organisations can do. They can do the one that you just said and separate out the commercial issues from the safety issues, or you could have just an overall risk position statement that included all of those things. But I think the key thing, and the thing that we sort of try to educate boards on is that there are those different ways of thinking about things, and you will get different insight depending on which risk paradigm you apply at the time.

Richard Robinson (06:35):

Well, you always favour the risk position statement that does give the board a unified proposition without committing themselves. I guess it's nuanced, but nuances are sometimes necessary.

Gaye Francis (06:49):

So that's quite interesting. Any final comments? I think it was just one of those topics that we've seen boards struggle with a little bit and this insight, and I think the project (due diligence) was sort of the one that brought those two concepts together.

Richard Robinson (07:05):

Well, I think it's more than that though, because you see, the way we run the project (due diligence) was remember, you basically have the promised upside risk position and you do everything you can to make sure that nothing goes wrong. That is actually the safety position. And I've got to say that our experiences, when we've done project due diligence reviews for about $10 million to about $3 billion Australian dollars worth, none of them ever gone over time of budget, have they?

Gaye Francis (07:27):

No. I think the other key thing to that, and they've probably done the commercial thing really well, or the upside downside risk position well, is they've been very good at articulating what the benefits are of the project.

Richard Robinson (07:39):

 Correct.

Gaye Francis (07:39):

So the upside position or that risk appetite position is well known, and then you're doing that downside or zero harm study from that position. Where it starts to get really difficult for projects is when they're unable to clearly articulate what the key benefits of the project are.

Richard Robinson (08:00):

Yeah, I'd have to agree with that.

Gaye Francis (08:01):

What you're trying to achieve.

Richard Robinson (08:03):

One of the things we always have difficulty with the project due diligence is getting, you might recall a couple of projects we were asked to look at, and if they couldn't articulate what they're set out to achieve, then it's virtually impossible to risk manage it because the goal posts keep changing.

Gaye Francis (08:21):

And that comes at a number of levels. I mean, that comes at your stakeholder engagement, and all of the stakeholders have to agree to what those critical success outcomes or what that end prize is for the project. If you've got different stakeholders wanting different outcomes for your project, that risk appetite certainly changes from different people's perspective.

Richard Robinson (08:43):

And that's where the difficulties arise.

Gaye Francis (08:45):

Okay. So I think this is probably an issue that'll continue with organisations.

Richard Robinson (08:52):

It's not going away. Not from what we're seeing.

Gaye Francis (08:54):

But I think if you can clearly see the difference between the ways that people look at things or the ways that you can cut through the risk issues, then that gives you that little bit of extra insight. So thanks for the chat today, Richard, and we'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (09:09):

Thanks Gaye.

Code of Practice & WHS/OHS Confusion

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 6

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Code of Practice and WHS/OHS confusion in relation to a presentation they delivered to the Dam Owners and Operators' Forum in Queensland recently, called "How do we do ALARP? Meeting a duty of care." 

They explain how the Code of Practice doesn’t align with WHS/OHS legislation and if you conduct an “augmented ALARP” as suggested by the ANCOLD (Australian National Committee on Large Dams) Guideline it does not promote innovation or an efficient due diligence process. and that this exists in a number of industry guidelines.

They also discuss the Oroville & Edenville Dam breaks (USA), how risk is multidimensional, how many industry guidelines have the same issues, and considering reciprocity as part of diligent decision making.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Full transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Episode 6 (Season 3) of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis chat about Code of Practice and WHS confusion.

(00:15):

If you have any feedback or topic ideas, please do get in touch via email admin@r2.com.au. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform and to give us a rating.

Gaye Francis (00:30):

Hi Richard. Welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:33):

Hi Gaye. Good to be back.

Gaye Francis (00:35):

Today we're going to talk about the Code of Practice and WHS/OHS confusion and it's sort of in relation to a presentation that we delivered last week to the Dam Owners and Operators' Forum for the Queensland regulator. There were four presenters, and our topic was "How do we do ALARP? Meeting a duty of care."

Richard Robinson (00:58):

And that was with particular regard to the ANCOLD (Australian National Committee on Large Dams) guidelines. And the regulator we're speaking of was the Dam Safety Regulator in Queensland.

Gaye Francis (01:04):

Correct. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification.

(01:08):

So do you want to just run through quickly the difference between the Code of Practice and the WHS/OHS requirements?

Richard Robinson (01:14):

Yeah, because one of the things we realised about the ANCOLD guidelines, they're trying to do two things and we actually suspect those two things at one level are being mandated by the way in which our system set things up. Although we would disagree with the sequence in which you do them.

(01:28):

Now, the first is the WHS legislation. It basically says identify the credible critical issues, identify all the possible practicable controls, in the circumstances work out what's reasonable, and then do that.

(01:41):

The Code of Practice, which has gone through a parliamentary process and is therefore mandated at another level and purports to represent an implementation of the WHS legislation says: Identify the issue. If for known issues, you can just put in recognised good practice. But if you don't know, then you've got to assess the risk before you start looking at the controls, which is the inverse of what the legislation actually calls up.

(02:07):

Now our interpretation of the ANCOLD guidelines is it's basically saying, look, we want you to do in effect what we would call the old way of doing risk assessment, likelihood and consequence, and potentially comparing out the criteria. And then you go do the second process, you say, right, it doesn't matter what the criteria say, is there anything else we can do? So we would tend to refer to that. I think we were talking about it later as augmented ALARP or something like that. And obviously it does both processes. And I think the point we make is that we would've said that's not particularly efficient. We would've said, you want to do what the WHS/OHS legislation asks first, and then if you want to do the second one, particularly if you're trying to work out what's prohibitively dangerous and whether or not, the way you put it, you can 'hop at any time'.

Gaye Francis (02:54):

I think it also, we talked about it before and it's that safety in design review and just putting in recognisable practice or standards that you're not looking for anything new or novel that you can do. And we've used, the one that we use for the dam break is that the current controls to make sure that the dam integrity stays intact and all of that sort of thing is to do regular inspections of the dam to make sure that there's been no movement that can be seen and things like that. And we're saying, well, maybe there's some technology out there that you could monitor the side of a dam and if there's any movement in it, then that could send alarms.

Richard Robinson (03:37):

That was that LIDAR based ground probe system.

Gaye Francis (03:39):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (03:41):

And obviously it'd only work for a hard face dam rather than with grass waving all over it. That wouldn't work. But that technology would work, and we've used it for railway cuttings, it would work really well.

Gaye Francis (03:51):

But that technology and solution doesn't exist in any of the guidelines or good practice that we know of to date.

Richard Robinson (03:58):

And I haven't had a dam person mention it to me. We've been doing it the other way around. Yeah, I would agree.

Gaye Francis (04:05):

So I think by following the Code of Practice and the ANCOLD guidelines, it's sort of doing "same old, same old" and not looking for that innovation.

Richard Robinson (04:16):

And the problem you've got is if you start with the target level of the risk approach and it turns out to be really low...

Gaye Francis (04:23):

What else are you going to do?

Richard Robinson (04:24):

It's hard to get yourself motivated looking for anything else that you could do. It sort of puts you in a culturally... you sort of don't want to do anything else because it doesn't seem much point.

Gaye Francis (04:35):

Well, you're almost in your comfort zone, aren't you?

Richard Robinson (04:38):

In effect. That's right. And you might remember in the presentation, I mean the Oroville Dam spillway break (in California), and I forget which the other dam was, but in each case, the American reviewer saying they were going to go and test what the design philosophy and cultural attitudes of the design team were when the dam was built. Because obviously, I mean we've been through this a number of times before, but in engineering term, the meaning's in the method. The design process will have certain consequences and if you've got a certain design process, you will get certain consequences. And if you look at this thing from different points of view, you do get different insight.

Gaye Francis (05:16):

And I mean, we've touched on this many, many times in our podcast that risk is multidimensional. And if you cut it different ways, if you look at it from a cultural viewpoint, you get a different insight into (as opposed to) if you look at it from a purely technical viewpoint. That dam that you were referring to was the Edenwille Dam (Michigan) break.

Richard Robinson (05:35):

Yeah, that's the other one.

(05:37):

Now, that was the other question which pops up a couple of times because in the safety case guideline, which was one of the reasons that the Dam Safety and Regulator in Queensland was attracted to us giving a presentation because he'd found that to be particularly helpful. But those cultural attitudes, the way you get ideas done. I mean, one of the observation we've had, it's not a bad idea to sort of get the community, who are at risk and brief them and get their feedback on what it all means.

(06:03):

Now, as you pointed out, that doesn't normally happen with dams. And you'd probably expect that it'd be the council who in one way represents the rate payers and residents downstream of a dam in a particular region who would probably have the greatest interest in this. Because there's nothing like having to explain as a dam owner or operator to a group of residents whom if the dam goes wrong, have a good chance of getting killed to actually have to explain what you're doing and why you're doing it. It does tighten up the argument, make it a lot more robust because the argument, the point went back, it's the principle of reciprocity. What you've really got to do is explain to them that as the dam owner an operator, if I was living downstream of the dam, this is what I have to ensure it would be reasonable. So it's that principle of reciprocity again.

Gaye Francis (06:53):

And it provides that transparency that people are looking for. And I think that's what appealed to the Dam Safety Regulator, that sometimes that safety case guideline could be used to establish some of those arguments in a transparent way that could be communicated to those stakeholders.

Richard Robinson (07:11):

Well, I think the thing that interests me the most is the last presenter was the General Counsel for one of the large water authorities in Queensland. And she just basically more or less went through the process the way R2A basically says to do it: Identify the issues, look at all the possible practical controls, determine in the circumstances which are reasonable and do that. Didn't have any problem following the ANCOLD guidelines as well, which was really from our point of view, a double up. And as we mentioned earlier, from the point of view of establishing whether something's prohibitively dangerous after you've put all your controls in place, it's probably not a bad thing to do anyway. So we're certainly not saying that the ANCOLD guidelines are massively in error or anything like that, but I think the difficulty we have is they're still doing it in the reverse order. But you can see from the way in which the legislation has been written and the code of practice has been written, why this confusion exists, it must exist at very high levels in just about every government agency.

Gaye Francis (08:04):

It's in a number of guidelines, isn't it that understanding of what they need to do. I think it's also creating a little bit of double-up work, and the process that it takes, and we've talked about this in a number of other podcasts, compliance with these guidelines and things like that where we are sort of saying, yeah, have a look at them and check them out. But following them as step-by-step guides usually doesn't meet the obligations of the legislation.

Richard Robinson (08:35):

And it certainly doesn't create innovation and create testing for other new ideas that could be potentially valuable. When you follow a standard, you just design to the standard. And that's that.

Gaye Francis (08:48):

And I think that's one of our topics for a podcast to follow. So I think unless you've got any closing comments, Richard, we might wrap this one up for today. So we hope you enjoyed that. It was an interesting presentation. We always enjoy giving these industry based presentations and that insight. So thanks for joining us today and hope you can join us next time.

Richard Robinson (09:10):

Thank you.

Art & Engineering: How being a great artist relates to the engineer's roles

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 5

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the relationship between art and engineering. 

They draw parallels between the roles of artists and engineers, highlighting the importance of composition, execution, and management in both fields. They outline the different types of engineers, such as creators, managers/consultants, and specialists, and the need for all three types in successful engineering organisations. Richard emphasises the importance of recognising and focusing on one's strengths in order to have a satisfying and successful career.  

Their conversation also touches on the challenges of small businesses, the role of innovation, and the limitations of relying solely on standards in engineering.

Read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss art and engineering and how being a good artist can relate to the different roles of engineers.

(00:16):

We hope you enjoy what we found are very entertaining chat. If so, give us a rating to help spread the word and subscribe to our channel on your favourite platform. Email us admin@r2a.com.au if you have any feedback or topic ideas.

Gaye Francis (00:36):

Hi Richard and welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:39):

Yes, good to see you again, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:41):

Good to see you too. Today we're going to talk about one of your topics, philosophy, a philosophical topic, art and engineering, and the links that art has to engineering and the way that we, I guess, manage or deliver engineering projects.

Richard Robinson (01:03):

Not perhaps the way I would've said it, but let's go with that for the start.

Gaye Francis (01:06):

<laughs> Alright.

Richard Robinson (01:08):

Now, for those who are particularly interested in this, I'm basically pinching most of the ideas from this book, "What is Art All About?" by Desiderius Orban, who, I think it was Hungarian who came to Australia, Sydney, when he was about 60yo, and he must have written this book when he was about 90yo, I think. So the moral of all that is you shouldn't give up until you're dead, and then you should reconsider.

Gaye Francis (01:29):

<laughs> So you might get your book done on philosophy and engineering yet, Richard.

Richard Robinson (01:32):

Yeah, it's possible!

(01:35):

Anyway, one of the points he makes, he's trying to explain why it's hard to be a good artist, and the comparison he makes is to music. So if you think about music, like the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) and so forth, if you want a good performance, you've got to have a good composition, i.e. there's got to be a composer, you need a sound conductor who's got to make the whole of she-bang run, and then you've got to have a whole lot of specialist musicians who are all very good at what they do. And if all those three things come together, you get a good result. Now that actually parallels engineering.

(02:04):

This is a discussion I've had with the young engineers pretty regularly because when you're trying to decide how your career goes, you've got to decide which one of these three you can be, because nobody doubts you can be a good composer, nobody doubts you can be a good conductor and nobody doubts you can be a good specialist (musician), like the first violinist for the MSO.

Gaye Francis (02:19):

And I can say he has had that discussion with me many years ago.

Richard Robinson (02:22):

And you have promptly forgotten. So I often wonder whether it was worth the trouble.

Gaye Francis (02:26):

<laughs>

Richard Robinson (02:26):

But anyway...

(02:28):

Now the point about this is when you're a young engineer, you have to decide which one of these things you are. Are you the creator or the designer, the people who love creating new things? Or are you the organiser, the manager, the consulting engineer? Or are you the specialist who becomes super specialised in a particular area of design?

(02:47):

And if you attend a conference or something like that, if you're at a technical conference, you can see all the specialist engineers appearing. But if you want to be a manager, you go and have a look at all the engineers that are attending and doing MBAs, for example, and you get a pretty good idea of what's going on there. But the real entrepreneurs, the ones who really create new designs, they're actually a pretty small group.

(03:09):

Now, the trick that he's making about being a good artist is that in order to be an excellent artist, you have to be excellent at all three. You have to be good at composition, because if you don't have a good idea you won't produce anything worthwhile. You have to be an excellent painter or whatever your art form is because if you can't do it properly, then you won't execute the composition well, that's the specialist part. And you have to able to put it all together, which is the management part. And that's why it's so rare you just can't do it all. I mean, there's lots of excellent painters out there, but it's like a photograph -- it's not actually anything that everyone gets really excited about. Whereas the ones that people get really excited about are the ones where it's actually expresses an idea that you just can't, previously (express); a photograph doesn't cut it, basically.

Gaye Francis (03:55):

And I think we have that conversation in successful businesses as well in organisations, don't we? You have to have all of those three components that have to come together, work really, really well together, to be a successful business.

Richard Robinson (04:09):

That's correct. And the trick is very few of us are all three. We've got elements of each amongst ourselves. Gaye can confirm that my organisational skills are sometimes not as good as they could be.

Gaye Francis (04:21):

And mine are probably better. And so we do complement each other there, Richard.

Richard Robinson (04:25):

And between the two of us, we cover all the gaps. And that's the point.

(04:28):

Now, if you're designing a business, I mean one of the points I've made, if you've ever go into business for yourself and go into a partnership, one of the things I recommend you do early is have a (financial) loss! Because it's all very fine having partners when you're making money, but the first time you make a loss and you've got to share the loss, that's when you find out who your real partners are.

Gaye Francis (04:47):

I think one of the interesting things in this is that you can be a leader in each of those categories. And you don't have to be everything to everybody to be seen as successful. And I think there's a lot of conversations, and especially in the engineering field, that there's a real push to get people to leaders and what does that mean? But I think they're being pushed in that managerial, that middle row, that they're leaders in the management area. But we have so many technical specialists out there that are leaders within their fields as well. But they maybe don't get the recognition. But if we don't have them, then the engineering organisation is nothing.

Richard Robinson (05:31):

Correct. Well, the point is you've got to have all three. And the trick is, and this is just from a personal viewpoint, and this is something you have to discover the hard way, you've got to decide which of these skills or combination of these skills you actually have. Because if you keep trying to do one of these things that you do not possess, it's going to hurt a lot and you can want it, but if you truly don't have it, it's not going to happen.

Gaye Francis (05:53):

It has to come naturally, doesn't it?

Richard Robinson (05:55):

Whereas if you actually pick your strength and effect and work on that, life tends to be a lot more satisfying. And career success seems to be a lot more assured so far as I can tell. But that's just a personal assessment based on my experience of life. You perhaps have others.

Gaye Francis (06:10):

No, it is much easier to do things that you're good at than challenge things that you're not so good at. I think from a small business viewpoint, the entrepreneurial stuff that we sort of not struggle with but is probably the hardest component of small business.

Richard Robinson (06:25):

Correct. But that's the reason why people go into business in the first place.

Gaye Francis (06:29):

And so I think in the last 18 months in particular, we've really tried to concentrate on the thought leadership stuff. What makes us that little bit different from the other organisations that are out there. And once we don't have any new ideas, the big guys just come and swallow us up.

Richard Robinson (06:46):

That's correct. Well, innovation doesn't come from large organisations, usually. It comes from the small guys who are trying to do things.

Gaye Francis (06:52):

And so sometimes we need those really sticky problems or those really difficult problems that you're pulling your hair out at the time. But to come up with that innovation, to come up with those new ideas and then they get refined as time goes on. But that's one of the interesting things of small business.

Richard Robinson (07:10):

I think you're just saying that creativity usually arises when you're under stress.

Gaye Francis (07:14):

<laughs> Well, as an engineer, creativity probably isn't my strongest point, but you know!

Richard Robinson (07:20):

Well, it actually flows in a lot of places though. Because one of the things we've got cranky (about), particularly with Standards Australia, and the way engineering has sort of turned up in the last 20 or 30 years, is that people have started doing design by standards. Now, I don't mean unkind, but innovation does not come through standards. If you want something interesting or different to occur, standards is not the place to do it. And it drives us crackers because in all our due diligence courses, we quote all these lawyers who are saying, the fact that you've complied with the standard does not excuse an engineer from applying their skill and expertise to whatever problem they're looking at.

Gaye Francis (07:55):

To solve the problem.

Richard Robinson (07:56):

And I've always preferred, and I think I've mentioned it before, the 1937 Chairman of Victoria Division's point about standards: Prevent fools from the folly and rogues from their rogoeury. Well, you're supposed to figure out how it ought to be, and then you check back against the standard to make sure you haven't done something daft, that's "fools from their folly". And if you're trying to hang a contractor, well, the easiest way to do it is say you haven't complied with the standard and your toast, but that's not helpful. I mean, it's just something you've got to do sometimes.

Gaye Francis (08:20):

I think there's a slow shift going towards some of the chief engineers that we've been talking to and working with. They're really expecting their engineers to solve the problem first and then go back and check against the standard. And that's what they're trying to encourage. There's a lot of organisations that are just doing the minimum and that's all we're going to do.

Richard Robinson (08:41):

To the standard. And I'm sorry, but if that's all you're doing as an engineer organisation, I don't think you're really an engineering organisation anymore. You're just following the rules, whatever they are. And you don't need to be an engineer to do that.

Gaye Francis (08:56):

That's true.

(08:57):

So any other little tidbits that you've got that you found insightful as art and engineering?

Richard Robinson (09:07):

Not that I'm aware of. I think I just said it, but thank you for the thought.

Gaye Francis (09:11):

<laughs> Alright, well, I'll wrap this podcast up. That was sort of a little bit more entertaining than I thought it was going to be. But thanks for joining us and we hope to see and hear you next time.

Richard Robinson (09:21):

Thanks, Gaye.

Control & Reasonableness in WHS/OHS Legislation

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 3, Episode 4

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss control and reasonableness in WHS/PHS legislation. 

They explain that the WHS/OHS legislation is a statutory statement of the common law duty of care and a defence against negligence, and that there’s two primary controls for negligence defence: no power defence (lack of control) and doing every reasonably practicable thing to address the matter. The aspect of control is built into the reasonableness decision in the legislation. 

The episode also covers:

• the importance of not getting caught up in arguments about responsibility and instead taking collective responsibility for addressing hazards. 

• Lord Atkin's question "Who is my neighbour?" and how the legal ruling relates to design process and retrospective design review. 

• the benefits of the due diligence approach in bringing key stakeholders together to collectively address safety issues. 

 The Criminal Manslaughter booklet mentioned can be purchase via our online store.

Read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Control and Reasonableness in WHS legislation (Occupational Health and Safety in Victoria). We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating and also subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, get in touch via admin@r2a.com au.

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:37):

Hi Gaye. We're back again.

Gaye Francis (00:38):

We are back again. Today we're going to talk about control and reasonableness in WHS/OHS legislation. And this follows on from some recent reading you've done.

Richard Robinson (00:52):

Well indeed, although it wasn't that recent because we've stuck it in the update of our "Criminal Manslaughter - How Not To Do It" booklet.

Gaye Francis (01:00):

Recent, last couple of months, let's go with that.

Richard Robinson (01:04):

But this flows from the fact that as we've commented a number of times, the WHS legislation is actually a statutory statement of the common law duty of care and as a defense against negligence. Now negligence, and again, we're just responding to what lawyers tell us, in terms of a defense against negligence, there's normally two primary controls. The first is no power defense that you didn't have control of the situation. So basically you can't be held accountable for something over which you do not have control. And the second defense was then in all the circumstances, you'd done every reasonable practical thing to deal with this matter.

(01:39):

Now, I used to wonder in the WHS legislation, they'd never talked about control. It just talked about...

Gaye Francis (01:47):

Reasonableness.

Richard Robinson (01:47):

It had to eliminate hazards so far as reasonably practicable. And if you couldn't eliminate, you've got to reduce them so far as reasonably practicable. And it wasn't until I was re-reading a book by Sherrif and Tooma. Sherrif was one of the lawyers who helped draft the legislation and Michael Tooma is sort of the guru from Sydney on this sort of thing. Just for the record, the book is "Understanding the Model Work Health and Safety Act, and this is on page 19. And the point they make is that they did consider when they were drafting the WHS legislation where they should actually have a section about control and to the extent you had control. And what they basically decided was that from the point of view of determining what's reasonable, that the aspect of control is an aspect of that reasonableness decision.

Gaye Francis (02:31):

Or test. Yeah.

Richard Robinson (02:32):

Or test. And so they built it into it. Now as we commented, I think in our last podcast or one of the other ones we've done, what happens a lot for example is that when you've got a split control, people sort of say: Well, it's your job to do it, and, no it's your job to do it, and then nothing gets done. And you have this extended argument between the parties and eventually somebody's got to say: Well, enough's enough. You've all got responsibilities, you've got to get on with it. And ultimately, obviously it's the PCBU that has to pull the plug and say, enough guys, you've actually got, we actually have to do things. You just can't sit on a problem while you argue whose responsibility it is. And that was one of Barry Sherrif's core remarks when he first drafted the OHS Act in Victoria in 2004, or his report that led to that, was that you just can't keep arguing about it. You've got to get on with it.

Gaye Francis (03:21):

So bringing the issue of who has control into what can be done when you're deciding what the reasonableness of those controls are.

Richard Robinson (03:30):

Now, what really depressed me about all this was just how ancient this problem actually is. You see, I was re-reading something about Lord Atkin, the Brisbane born British Law Lord, well actually he called himself Welsh, Welsh Law Lord, and Donahue versus Stevenson. If anyone's particularly interested, there's a university professor from Saskatchewan (Canada), law professor who was writing up (that) when they get assigned a case, the judges write out notes and so forth. And they do that because if one of them gets sick and another judge has to take over, they get the assistance of all the previous notes. Anyway, in this Atkins actually explaining where he gets his famous quote: The rule that you are to love your neighbor becomes in law, you must not injure your neighbour, and the lawyer's question, Who is my neighbour? receives a restricted reply.

(04:19):

The answer is: You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which might injure your neighbour. Who then in law is your neighbour? The answer seems to be those persons so closely and directly affected by the act, they ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I turn in my mind the acts or omissions, which are called into question.

(04:36):

I'm glad you're enjoying this Gaye.

Gaye Francis (04:38):

Good job! Without even any prompts, I'm impressed.

Richard Robinson (04:42):

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make though, what I found particularly interesting is that the way Lord Atkin actually describes it, that's the quote from the parable of the Good Samaritan, that the lawyer's question: Who is my neighbour? That's actually the introduction to the parable the Good Samaritan. So this is a 2,000 year old question that the lawyers are asking. And the way he actually expresses it is actually as this design philosophy which we've been talking about, you've got to take into account your acts or omissions, which are called into question, meaning after the event when it's all gone horribly wrong and your acts or omissions are being tested to see whether you had or hadn't done what you ought to have done, that's actually the design review process. So he's taking a 2,000 year old lawyer's question and converting it to a design process. And that was 1932, so it's 2,000 years ago to 1932. And it looks like we managed to get this into the Australian parliaments in the form of the WHS legislation in, well, for the most part 2010. So I guess that's a good result. It just seemed like a very long time to me.

Gaye Francis (05:46):

So what we're sort of saying is that they've always looked at it in that way, haven't they? In that what could have happened and what have you failed to do and should have done? Was it reasonable to do so?

Richard Robinson (05:58):

So you've just articulated the basis of moral philosophy, how it ought to have been, and that's basically what it's all about. So I think we've been through this one before, but there's three broad areas of philosophy. Formal philosophy, which is logic, natural philosophy, which is science and moral philosophy, how things ought to be. And that's why the lawyers and the engineers abruptly align because if you just look at any sort of design process, the engineers are designing before the event, and then the lawyers conduct a retrospective design review after the event. And that also explains if anybody's wondering about it, why engineers seem to pick on each other a lot in court. Because basically if you are doing a retrospective design review, who are you going to hire as an expert witness to analyse what an engineer is previously designed?

Gaye Francis (06:41):

Another engineer is all you can do.

Richard Robinson (06:42):

Another engineer is all you can do. You can't do it any other way. So that's what has to happen. I remember talking to one of the people that we've been associated with and asked what you're doing. He said I seem to be mostly just doing expert witness stuff, chiefly against other fire engineers. And I don't whether that's a career move that you want to do, but these things happen.

Gaye Francis (07:01):

I think just touching on that point, that the WHS legislation was trying to move away from (it being) a single person's responsible for making all the decisions. And we've touched on this in a number of other podcasts, and I think one of the benefits of the due diligence approach is that it brings all of the key stakeholders into the same room to talk these issues through. So it's almost a collective responsibility rather than a single person having to take all of that responsibility for the design.

Richard Robinson (07:32):

Which actually drags them through another sort of 2,000 year cycle. If you care about these things. Well, because you remember in the way in which human beings make decisions? The first one's you ask an expert all on the one person, we actually swapped it around because normally we used to say there was the adversarial citizen system next, and then it was inquisitorial last. But in practice, the way the history of the legal system was, the first one was sort of one person deciding, in effect, arbitrarily. That's what an expert does. And then you had an inquisitor, which then asked a whole lot of people to decide who was responsible. It seems I've got... my new in-laws, one of them is a German judge. But obviously they're trained chiefly as criminologists because they have to go around and ask people to find out things. So it's a different, that's what the inquisitor process has to do.

Gaye Francis (08:23):

And then they come to a decision by themselves.

Richard Robinson (08:26):

Well, they can get some advice, but yes, but after having asked everybody. When you get to the last approach, you get a mob of people deciding together. That's what trial by jury is. And in a sense, that's what we've just done the last couple of times we had the best available knowledge in the room. We've gone to a structured process to pick their brains and then basically held up a mirror saying, this is what you said people, is this what you meant? The line: say what you mean, mean what you say.

Gaye Francis (08:55):

We've covered this as well in a number of podcasts. The two final questions that we ask in a workshop situation: Are there any other issues that aren't on the table that we need to discuss? And further, are there any other good ideas that anybody wants to put on the table that we should consider and that sort of sign off of the collective group? As you said, we've got the best available knowledge in the room. We've taken you through a structured process. We've tried our very, very best to get it right and we have been diligent.

Richard Robinson (09:21):

We've been diligent. We can still be wrong, but we've been diligent.

Gaye Francis (09:23):

We've been diligent. That's correct.

Richard Robinson (09:28):

I didn't have any last remarks. I think it's your turn to finish up!

Gaye Francis (09:30):

You don't have any last remarks this time! <laughs>

(09:33):

So I hope you enjoyed today's podcast based on some of the comments, from Tooma. So thank you for joining us and we hope to see you next time.

Richard Robinson (09:45):

Thanks, Gaye.

R2A's Due Diligence Process: Why it works

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 3

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss R2A's preferred approach to due diligence. 

They explain why they start with a top-down approach, usually starting with the military intelligence, threat and vulnerability technique. And how often organisations who have started with a bottom-up process have been floundering for some time, come to R2A to cut through the detail.

Richard and Gaye also discuss the:

• importance of selecting the right tools and techniques for the job,

• need for multiple perspectives and approaches to ensure a comprehensive analysis, 

• importance of bringing key stakeholders together and the challenges of working in silos, 

• need for preparation and adaptability in the due diligence process.

Read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis chat about their due diligence process at R2A and why it helps their clients. We hope you enjoy their chat. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform.

Gaye Francis (00:25):

Good morning, Richard. Welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:28):

Morning Gaye. Been a busy couple of weeks.

Gaye Francis (00:30):

We have had a busy couple of weeks. It's been good and interesting.

(00:36):

Today we're going to talk about R2A's preferred due diligence approach. We often get asked why we do things a certain way and we've covered in another podcast, I believe, the different tools and techniques that are out there and that there's many tools and techniques out there. And one of the first things that you've got to do is select what you're going to use.

Richard Robinson (00:56):

Which of the approaches you're going to use out of the eight by three matrix that we suggest is available to you (refer R2A texts).

Gaye Francis (01:02):

That's correct. So part of today's podcast has been recorded because we've been congratulated, which you don't often expect as consulting engineers to be congratulated on doing a job well done. It's just I guess what you expect when you get paid to do something. But we've had a number of stakeholders come up to us after workshops and say: That was a really good process, I really understand what we are doing now. So we thought we'd go through the approach that R2A uses.

Richard Robinson (01:30):

And anybody lives on the 65th floor who thinks that, yes, it's kind of interesting, isn't it?

Gaye Francis (01:39):

So do you want to kick off and I'll throw some comments in?

Richard Robinson (01:42):

Yeah, by all means! So what we thought we'd do was actually just explain which approach we prefer to start with.

(01:48):

Now what we tend to do is start with this one, and if it doesn't work, then we go scratching around looking for other ones. I mean, for example, in three by eight matrix, the legal review, we always suggest that ought to be done, but we don't start with the legal review. That's something that once you've gone through your process, you get the lawyers to actually check. And it actually is quite important because Gaye has talked about this and she keeps forgetting the line. I keep making the (Immanuel) Kant remark that engineers seem to like: The meanings in the process, the results are only consequences. So whatever analysis or review process you adopt that will define the consequences.

Gaye Francis (02:25):

There are types of results that you're going to get from.

Richard Robinson (02:28):

And we keep coming across people who started with bottom up processes and they wonder why they get lost in detail and floundering around. And I've got to say that's the reason why we actually get quite a lot of work is because they've been floundering around for quite some time and they're rather desperately looking for somebody to sort of cut through the Gordian knot and bring in the thing to a useful place.

Gaye Francis (02:44):

And resolve the situation, isn't it, that they can make a decision going forward?

Richard Robinson (02:48):

Correct. So we just thought we'd say, well, okay, this is the approach we normally take.

(02:53):

Now we always start top down and the only really effective top down approach that we know about is the military intelligence, threat and vulnerability technique. That's where you spell out what you're trying to protect, what's important to you, what the credible threats to what it is you're trying to protect are. And then you look to see whether those threats expose what you're trying to achieve or protect. And if you find one of those, that's called a vulnerability just for the record. I mean Asia for example, does threat assessments. They don't do hazard assessments. That's what organisations and bottom up tends to do hazard assessments.

Gaye Francis (03:27):

But there's a whole lot of ways that you can do the threat and vulnerability assessments. So sometimes we look at critically exposed groups.

Richard Robinson (03:33):

Which we did for tunnel and fire design.

Gaye Francis (03:36):

You can look at it on a functional basis.

Richard Robinson (03:38):

Which we did for safety cases for ports like Sydney and Sydney Harbour and other places.

Gaye Francis (03:43):

Which comes in as a geographic basis as well. And then you can do other completeness checks for railways, for example. You can do the different train types, different collision types, different track types. So there's a whole lot of ways that you can get...

Richard Robinson (03:57):

The last job we were just doing was done by task.

Gaye Francis (04:00):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (04:02):

We went through and broke down the tasks. We then also came back and double checked against critical exposed group, make sure we didn't have overlook anything. But that means we took two cuts through at a high level. And I think that's the point. One of the points we keep making; risk is this multidimensional creature. If you think a single cut is going to get you the answer that you want, it's probably not the case. I mean, we always suggest you have the lawyers review it, come hell or high water anyway, because it's got to work for the lawyers because if you don't, it won't survive post legal scrutiny.

Gaye Francis (04:30):

But I think one of the interesting things with the job that we just did when we did look at the tasks that were being done, there are a whole lot of controls that came out of that. But then when we went through the critically exposed groups, there were some additional controls. So I think sometimes you do have to have that, because it is multidimensional, you've got to have a number of ways of looking at it and checking it to make sure that you haven't overlooked anything. And that's one of the ways that you do do your completeness check.

Richard Robinson (04:56):

Now having done that though, when we're looking at a particular vulnerability, the way we tend to like to do that is just to write out a single line threat barrier diagram. Now that's a very Newtonian way of thinking about things. If this then that time goes on and flows in one direction, there's no quantum mechanics, it's just a single flow of ideas. And that's certainly what we used in the VCAT proposal and certainly what we used in the last two reports that we've done. And the reason why we particularly like using this, from the point of view we explain in the hierarchy controls, it's one of the really crisp ways to present the elimination option always comes first. If you can't eliminate, then you say, okay, can we prevent it from occurring? If you can't prevent it from occurring, you say, right, can we mitigate the scale of the consequences? We prefer that to multi bow ties, motor alarm bow ties, because everybody gets lost.

Gaye Francis (05:49):

And I think we've been using it more to get everybody on the same page and to almost set the context of the review. We don't often use them as an analysis tool. They're often as a communicational explanatory tool. So it gets everybody on the same page that focuses them on the key issue of concern. These are the controls that we've got in place. These are the possible additional controls you could have. And then you may or may not need to go to another level of detail to determine what's reasonable or not.

Richard Robinson (06:19):

And just remember whilst we start that way, it isn't always the way. I mean, for example, we're doing that Supreme Court expert witness job on the effect of rolling blackouts. And we started off trying to use threat barrier diagrams to describe all the scenarios that we could think of. And in the end, you actually couldn't do it. We had to actually go to a probabilistic basis, an epidemiological basis rather than a causal Newtonian basis.

Gaye Francis (06:45):

And that was because there wasn't just a single cause associated with it.

Richard Robinson (06:48):

Well, there was a single cause, but the mechanisms were so varied. So people were getting trapped in elevators, blood blanks freezing over, trains stopping in tunnels, and all sorts of complexities. But there's a whole multitude... And all the traffic lights going out tends to cause a bit of chaos too.

Gaye Francis (07:04):

It sort of sets the context for the review as well. When you're determining what's reasonable.

Richard Robinson (07:09):

Now, when we're actually look at the threat barrier diagrams, the other thing that we do, and we've just been commissioned to do another major review - This one's an international one, just! - but what we then do is when you're looking at the particular barrier in the threat barrier diagram and saying how reliable is that barrier? In terms of trying to explain it to somebody, the best tool we've found to use it is reliability block diagrams or success block diagrams. So the success block diagrams describes what elements provide success for that particular barrier. Now, the advantage of doing that is that the threat barrier diagram then remains fairly uncomplicated because just whack in what that functional barrier is, and then you explain in the reliability block diagram all the elements and what needs to achieve.

Gaye Francis (07:52):

I think one of the interesting things with that as well is it often shows the weakest link in the chain and it's often not the one that you're focusing on. And so it's no use putting in another barrier that's really, really reliable and gold plating something if you've got another barrier in there or another element in there that's actually limiting the success of that whole chain.

Richard Robinson (08:18):

If you've got a single point of failure, it's always going to cost you mega dollars to gold plate it, and that single point of failure will not go away.

Gaye Francis (08:26):

And I think that was one of the things that came up in the recent jobs, wasn't it? They were focusing on a particular issue of concern. And when we went down to that, and we did need to go back down to that reliability block diagram level, the issue that they were trying to resolve the solution was totally different to the original one that they were looking at.

Richard Robinson (08:45):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (08:45):

Just to address that common mode failure, because if they didn't address that common mode failure, whatever they were talking about doing would've had immaterial impact.

Richard Robinson (08:56):

The other key point in all this, which I think is actually really important, I suspect that's one of the reasons why we keep getting a job out of all this, is that the whole point of the WHS Legislation (OHS Act) going back from Maxwell QC when he wrote his thing, was that one of the core frustrations of the health and safety business was that people had split responsibilities. And the fact that somebody over here failed to do something, the people were saying: Well, it's not my job, it's their job to get it right. And he said: Well, no, that's not right, to the extent that you have to control, you've got to do stuff and you can't just keep blaming the other person and not doing anything, you've got to get on with it. So in both the last couple of jobs, there's been a tendency for somebody to say: Well, this is the responsibility of, say a fire engineer and you, the fire engineer, have to sign off on the problem; it's all your problem, the rest of us just sit back and wait until you figure it out and sign off.

Gaye Francis (09:46):

And the poor fire engineer says: No, no, no!

Richard Robinson (09:49):

I'd sooner withdraw from the job. I'm not taking responsibility for everything that could go wrong. Mainly because you people want to have some other solution which provides operational benefits, but you're not willing to take into account these serious long-term consequences of that fire design. Which by the way, as the fire engineer, I inherit for the rest of my working life. So it's actually quite interesting and it's rather interesting from my point of view -- I obviously started life as a fire engineer with Faction Mutual, and I guess I was doing this before it was trendy, but I moved on to being a due diligence engineer. But when you put the due diligence context together, the fire engineer is particularly pleased to say: That makes sense! I'm with you.

Gaye Francis (10:31):

I think that's one of the other benefits of the due diligence approach that we do. I mean, we said this on a number of occasions, the tasks that we usually complete are generative interviews to come to get a first cut of the situation before you go into a stakeholder workshop. You never go into a stakeholder workshop unprepared or with a blank piece of paper. That could always lead to disaster. But I think one of the things that the due diligence approach does, and there's been multiple stakeholders in the last few jobs that we've worked on.

Richard Robinson (11:01):

Multiple multiples.

Gaye Francis (11:02):

And they've often been doing their things in their own little silos. And this is the first approach that's brought them all together to bring them onto the same page. And so I think collectively, they could then go forward. Whereas when you're trying to solve it in your own silo, it's almost impossible.

Richard Robinson (11:21):

Well, that's what the case is. And what happens is you get these huge delays and after a while the delays get so large that the whole process stalls. But you might remember, we noticed this when we were doing the Gold Coast, the Tugan bypass, the tunnel under the Gold Coast airport. You remember we had that workshop, and I thought it was pretty tough because the Queenslanders were fundamentally paying for it, but it went under the Gold Coast airport. So that means it had the federals in there, and it then sort of popped out in New South Wales. But the New South Wales regulators were giving everybody hell. And nobody would agree. And it wasn't until we ran that last workshop. We did not previously prepare for that one that, well, I recall.

Gaye Francis (11:58):

No, we had about 54 stakeholders across all of the jurisdictions. So it was a pretty exciting time.

Richard Robinson (12:05):

Absolutely. And yet we managed to land it. Now, what I also understood about that, it wasn't so much that our process per se was the most brilliant on the day, but the process of getting the right people in the room and taking it through a structured process does work.

Gaye Francis (12:20):

Yes. Yeah. So any last comments? So that's what we thought we'd share with you today. I hope you found it interesting. Again, not a single size fits everyone.

Richard Robinson (12:32):

Well, you might recall we were doing that Warragamba Dam upgrade. Remember how we started the process and it didn't go well, and at lunchtime we had a sudden... We need another approach here! And we found a way forward that we could land it through the group.

Gaye Francis (12:49):

I would've preferred to end on our successful jobs that we've used, our preferred process. But yes, I guess it just shows...

Richard Robinson (12:55):

<laughs> My point being that you can't just assume it's going to work every time.

Gaye Francis (12:59):

That is true. And you have to have enough tools and techniques up your sleeve that you can adapt if you need to on the day. But preparation, preparation, I'm all for that.

(13:09):

So thank you for joining us and we hope for you to listen next time. Thanks.

Richard Robinson (13:14):

Thanks.

Design trumps Risk Assessment - R2A’s VCAT Hearing Success (as Expert Witnesses)

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 3, Episode 2

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss their recent success (as Expert Witnesses) at VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) and how design trumps risk assessment. 

They discuss their case involving an application for a building permit in the outer safety zone of a major hazard facility. WorkCover advised against building two new dwellings due to increased population and societal risk. However, Richard and Gaye, as expert witnesses, argued that proper safety and design measures, such as laminated windows and steel roofs, could mitigate the risks. 

The VCAT decision supports R2A’s position, and emphasises the importance of, working out the credible worst-case scenarios and then designing for it. 

You can listen further about this VCAT hearing in Season 2 episodes 1 & 2.

Read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss their recent success at VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) and how design trumps risk assessment. We hope you enjoy the episode. Please give us a rating if you do also subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

Gaye Francis (00:26):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:28):

Hello Gaye. Good to see you again.

Gaye Francis (00:30):

Good to see you. We do see each other often.

(00:34):

Today we're going to talk about our VCAT success and our safety and design issue, again. We have covered this a number of times in a couple of other episodes, particularly in season two, which we did in episode 1 of season two, which is callled "Safety and Design, and then episode 2 of the season 2, we discussed "The Demise of ALARP in Major Hazards". We have finally got an outcome from VCAT that we were expert witnesses for and it was in our favour, which was a part of surprise, I think?

Richard Robinson (01:11):

I'm not sure about that. I mean, I think from our point it was the only logical outcome, but it's very encouraging for the legal system to support that position.

Gaye Francis (01:20):

But it was against other decisions... the decision that Member Whitney made was different... she came to a different conclusion than other VCAT.

Richard Robinson (01:31):

Correct. She had to roll the system and she had to make particularly clear that she'd done it in the way that if somebody appealed to the Supreme Court, it would be likely to survive the experience. But that's what competent members do.

(01:46):

Now, just for the record, if anybody's interested, the decision, date of the order is 12th of March, 2024. The citation is Nasralla v Hobsons Bay City Council [2024] VCAT 212. That's if you want to look it up because all this information's available publicly and so you can go and look it up if you wish.

(02:09):

It's actually an 88 page decision, which for VCAT is a true monster, and about two thirds of it is to do with planning law and the application of the way in which the major hazards advice and how it was represented and so forth was put forward.

Gaye Francis (02:23):

Just before you go on, it's probably worth just giving a quick summary of what the case was. So it was the application for a building permit to provide two new dwellings on a piece of land that only currently had one old house on it. So it was to upgrade that to two new dwellings. However, it was in the outer safety zone of a major hazard facility in the Hobson Bay area (in Victoria, Australia). And so it did have a formal planning overlay on it, but WorkCover, not as a responsible authority but as an advisory authority, went against building the two dwellings. And that was (because) it increased the population at that site.

Richard Robinson (03:07):

So it was a societal risk argument, but the current house normally would have four persons present in it and all other things being equal, if you build two houses, you'd have eight persons present and presumably if you didn't do anything, they'd be subject to the equivalent level of risk, which means there'd be eight people at risk rather than four people at risk. And that was the advice from major hazards.

(03:26):

Now, the trick about major hazards was, I remember, previously they used to do it on a target level of risk basis, like the likelihood of killing a single person on one by 10 to the minus seven per annum and then plotted a risk curve. And this area, this region used to be beyond that boundary. And so the business for knocking down an old house and putting up two units or two houses was a very popular activity. And indeed the blocks on either side of this particular house had just that done to it. So it wasn't as though the young people who were developing the site were doing anything new or novel. And what was particularly grueling for them was that they'd gone through the whole planning process and then as the last gasp, the council had written to major hazards and major hazards had changed their planning or advice. And so rather than doing on the individual risk contour had said it's a credible worst case scenario, it's basically a kilometer away from this site if you're in there, no go.

Gaye Francis (04:21):

Yeah. So they changed it to consequence basis, which we've discussed in previous podcasts.

Richard Robinson (04:28):

Now, as I said, it was an 88 page decision and took six months and we were a little bit puzzled as to why it was taking so long. But when we looked at the comprehensive nature of the decision, it became pretty clear why the member had done it that way because she was trying to cover all bases and prevent any further things, issues coming back, particularly in appeal to the Supreme Court.

(04:49):

Now, as I mentioned earlier, about two thirds of the judgment was to do with planning matters and it's probably a more comprehensive view of planning matters. Now we're obviously not lawyers and we're certainly not comprehensive in planning law, but from our reading of it, and if anybody's interested in that application of planning law in Victoria, it's one of the more comprehensive ones that I've seen.

(05:12):

It also included a thing to do with the appeal to governor and council, which was, I have to say, completely new to us because I'd never seen that one before. And that seems to be because if you're dealing with somebody having to appeal to Supreme Court, that's a pretty expensive thing. And so in the case of hardship or something like that was involved and there was a general policy issue involved, which is the case in this situation -- other people had had houses rejected and other people had had houses approved depending on the whim of the previous different members making decisions. It had to be that comprehensive.

(05:47):

Now, what particularly pleased us was the core decision, which I got to say from our point of view as well, is the last 20% because there were a number of appendices in the decision as well, was that WorkSafe had gone for consequence. They'd said there's an inner safety area and an outer safety area, which was I think was...

Gaye Francis (06:06):

300 meters and a kilometer.

Richard Robinson (06:09):

This building was inside the outer safety area, but not inner safety area. And after an awful lot of yelling and screaming with the regulator and the major hazard facility concerned, everybody agreed that the credible worst case in that outer safety area was broken windows, which is in the safety case summary from 2018, basically from overpressures and things like that. There was no suggestion that there would be missiles coming out of the plant that could get that far or any of those sorts of things.

(06:40):

Now, what slightly confused us was that nowhere in all this had anybody considered safety and design to deal with what was now a known credible consequence driven hazard. And the core issues from our viewpoint where if you're inside the house and an explosion overpressure comes your way, if the windows blow in and it turns into shrapnel, and this is a well-known terrorist modus operandi, you could get impaled and the correct way to design against that is to put laminated windows in there. And one of our associates in New Zealand, Dr. Frank Stocks, was busily designing the new Auckland Airport. And amongst other things, he was fretting about people leaving explosives around and they were busily putting laminated windows around the place to deal with that hazard. So this is a recognized good practice, although I've got to say it's not anywhere in any particular standard per se, although that's not true for high explosion major facilities.

Gaye Francis (07:34):

But not for domestic purposes.

Richard Robinson (07:37):

That's correct.

(07:38):

And the other hazard, which we were concerned about was that if you put a tile roof in the area and you have an explosion overpressure coming your way, tiles and things sitting on top, gargoyles, whatever attractive thing you want to put on your roof, get knocked off and then these things fall to the ground and can obviously hit people on the ground and around them. And we said tin roofs or steel roofs, colorbond roofs, are a better way from a design viewpoint. And if you did both these things...

Gaye Francis (08:04):

then that would address the two hazards.

Richard Robinson (08:06):

Yeah, the credible critical consequences. And in any event, the event would be rare because that's the whole point of the major hazard safety case regime and nobody's in any doubt about its rarity. So that part wasn't a question. And if you did these things, it wouldn't actually provide the design. Now, what was really odd from our point of view is when we reviewed the plans, it looked like they had almost designed for this particular hazard, even though at the time...

Gaye Francis (08:31):

it hadn't been on the radar.

Richard Robinson (08:32):

It hadn't been on the radar, because it had a steel roof. I mean, if you're against big hailstones breaking tile roofs up, a steel roof is a much superior way to go.

Gaye Francis (08:41):

And I think that's modern design anyway. There's not many houses that design with, well, not in our (Melbourne suburban)area anyway that have...

Richard Robinson (08:48):

Well, it's normally more economic to put a steel roof on, colorbond, and that was already specified. Whilst it wasn't on the plan, shown on the plans, the advice from the owners, the Nasrallas, was that the architect advising had already said we planned to put laminate on the windows, but that was from thermal (perspective) it wasn't on the plans...

Gaye Francis (09:09):

It was an efficiency, heat efficiency viewpoint.

Richard Robinson (09:12):

So that was going to be there anyway. And then when we looked at the plans and completely to our surprise on the second floor, the only place where there might've been a window facing the plant, which where you get the reflective wave and the greater pressure, there was no window there, it was just a blank wall. And if I've been asked to design a building to deal with that pressure wave, that's what you would've done. We were obviously quite surprised by this and we could sort of just say, look, if you were going to design for the hazard as spelt out by the major hazard facility as certified in effect by the major hazards, these are the controls you put in place. And they were already there.

(09:53):

And after the 88 pages, Member Whitney said, I agree. And didn't even require the planning permit to be changed beyond that which had already been agreed to by the council since all those controls that we would have expected to be in place had already been agreed to be there.

(10:13):

Now the reason why this is so important, and Gaye's just nodding her head wisely over there, is because the business of working out what the credible worst case concept is and then designing for it is clearly, according to VCAT, the way forward.

Gaye Francis (10:33):

And this would appear to be the first decision that's been made on that basis.

Richard Robinson (10:38):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (10:39):

So that makes it really interesting because that gives councils and organisations or councils that have major hazard facilities in their municipality, an additional tool that says: Well, we can actually design and have houses in these areas in these outer safety zones because there's precautions available to deal with them. So it's almost putting, and I don't know whether this exists formally, I don't think it does, it doesn't appear to be a major hazard overlay on any of the planning permits or planning procedures that we can see. But it's really interesting that some of these things haven't been put forward for new buildings and new dwellings in areas with major hazard facilities.

Richard Robinson (11:26):

And it's something we haven't understood. I mean, as we pointed out, in our opinion, it actually doesn't make much sense. Because if you're in a bushfire overlay, you have to design for bushfires. If you're in a earthquake zone, you have to design for earthquakes. If you've got a serious windstorm around, you have to design for windstorm. What you have to do is design for whatever location you find yourself. And that's something which we hammer in our texts and everything else that, I mean, if you live near a major hazard facility, you've got to take it into account that's just obvious. And the closer you are, the more you've got a design for it. And so the example we give, if you're immediately adjacent to it, you might wind up in an underground, reinforced conquering bunker with its own air supply without a view or anything. It'll be fiendishly the expensive and one would imagine you wouldn't want to live there. But it would be safe.

Gaye Francis (12:14):

So there's things that you can do. So the safety and design element, and I think just from a town planning viewpoint, all of those things hadn't been taken into account. Now, I don't know whether there's not the expertise in council to deal with these things or engineering designs to be able to bring that into it.

Richard Robinson (12:31):

Councils have been pretty much de-engineered in the last 20 or 30 years.

Gaye Francis (12:35):

But we were the only technical people involved in this particular case.

Richard Robinson (12:39):

Yeah, and that was a bit of a surprise to me too because there was no expert witness.

Gaye Francis (12:43):

For the council.

Richard Robinson (12:45):

Or for the major has facility or for that matter major hazards. The only people that actually turned up were people representing the legal aspects.

Gaye Francis (12:54):

And the policy position.

Richard Robinson (12:55):

And legal policy aspects. So overall, I mean there's some larger issues and probably the subject of another podcast, which could be sort of talked about here, I suppose the one that puzzled me the most in which we hammered in there significantly... You see what frustrated us if you didn't improve the design at all and just left the existing house there, the four people living in the existing house were subject to broken windows and bits being blown off the roof, i.e. relatively, they were in a more dangerous situation than the eight people in the new houses that were designed for that hazard. And so it was lower risk to develop than not to develop.

Gaye Francis (13:35):

So from our viewpoint, you're potentially setting people up for a fall by not approving improvements.

Richard Robinson (13:43):

Well, that's correct. And that's not in the council's interest, it's not in the people who live there's interests and it's not in the interest of the major hazards facility. So how that situation could arise in the first place is something that we just didn't get.

Gaye Francis (13:54):

So from our viewpoint, I think it was a pretty straightforward decision and the solution was very, very obvious. But it was a very lengthy and difficult complex process to go through to get two new dwellings approved.

Richard Robinson (14:12):

Well, yes, that's right. Although I have to say part of it's we started online and when we actually went to the VCAT hearing in person, I think that did bring things to a head and get everything functioning a lot faster.

Gaye Francis (14:25):

So I think we are pretty chuffed with ourselves that we got a good result for the Nasrallas and safety and design was the way to go.

Richard Robinson (14:39):

Well the other interesting thing was that there had been a number of appeals to the Supreme Court on this whole matter and the way it should be done. And the Member Whitney is obviously very much aware of that and actually tried to address all those cases because she lists all the previous cases that might be the case. And we know one of them, which we've be doing for another client, that had gone to Supreme Court has been sent back to VCAT, <still outstanding> our imagines that this decision may influence those further outcomes, but that remains to be seen.

Gaye Francis (15:07):

Alright, thanks for joining us today and we'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (15:11):

Thanks.

Design Analysis not Risk Analysis

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 1

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss the topic of design analysis versus risk analysis. They explore the difference between ALARP (as low as reasonably practicable) and SFAIRP (so far as reasonably practicable) and how the interpretation of these concepts has caused confusion and problems in various industries. 

They also discuss the importance of safety in design and the need for a retrospective design review to ensure that all reasonable practical precautions are in place. The conversation also touches on the role of AI in consequence modelling and design review, as well as the need for quality assurance and independent checks in governance processes. 

The episode concludes with a reminder that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to risk analysis and that different tools and techniques can provide different insights into due diligence issues.

You can read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to season three of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the topic of design analysis rather than risk analysis. We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform.

Gaye Francis (00:27):

Welcome Richard, we're back for Season 3 of our podcast.

Richard Robinson (00:31):

Yes, and as we were just talking, Gaye had an excellent holiday in Finland with the family.

Gaye Francis (00:35):

I did! Had to do due diligence a couple of times with managing kids, but we made it safely and had a good time.

Richard Robinson (00:44):

And since then, you're able to go on more business trips because the kids are so well accepting of your traveling needs.

Gaye Francis (00:50):

My traveling needs. That's correct. Just a little aside there!

(00:55):

Welcome back, as we said, to Season 3. Today we're going to talk about design analysis rather than risk analysis, and the need to demonstrate SFAIRP (so far as reasonably practicable) is really a design exercise.

Richard Robinson (01:12):

Yeah. In part this arose because there's been some interesting discussion if there's really a difference between ALARP and SFAIRP. And I suppose we were sort of completely mystified by the whole discussion because, from our viewpoint, ALARP should never have existed. And the way it got interpreted has caused an awful lot of grief in an awful lot of places for an awful lot of people.

(01:29):

But when we were just fiddling around with it, I think it partly irritated me because I've sort of said a lot of things in different ways and I've understood what the different points were. For example, consequence modeling, that's things that go 'pop' and 'bang' and overpressures and things like that, is a very scientific area of activity. And consequence modeling to me was always fully scientific. What always was clear to me is that risk analysis per se, which is a simultaneous appreciation of likeliness consequence was always a very muddly subject and everybody always got confused.

(01:58):

Now, I just did sort of an exercise out of a curiosity because all this ALARP (vs) SFAIRP business reappeared, I sort of actually went and looked back at Sir Frank Layfield's review of the Sizewell B power station, which is where he had a problem because whether or not they were going to approve the new nuclear power station, which was a fairly complicated idea in the UK, and he had a lot of engineers advising him and he was a lawyer. And one of the things that sort of became clear is that when you look at nuclear radiation levels, you had to decide what was harmful or not harmful and what was reasonable. And so the recommendation that came out of his thing is that somebody should do a review of this. Now that sort of ultimately sort of floated over to the then what was the new UK Health and Safety Executive, and when you look at the people who put the tolerability risk of nuclear power stations together, they were mostly scientists talking about radiation and they were the people who dreamed up this whole ALARP business.

Gaye Francis (02:52):

So they were actually looking at the level of radiation that could be acceptable, in quotation commas, "to humans".

Richard Robinson (02:59):

But what was interesting about that, that so-called dagger diagram never had any numbers in that document, but what they did do was put in the appendice what acceptable or tolerable levels of risk in different industries otherwise were: Car industries about 10 to minus four per annum for a single fatality; and lightning strikes and so forth was about 1 x 10 to minus six or 10 to seven. Now, they didn't necessarily recommend putting those numbers onto their dagger diagram, but that's what everybody in the petrochemical business, in particular, and the land use planning guys in major hazard facilities did for the next 20 years.

Gaye Francis (03:35):

They equated the two (ALARP & SFAIRP).

Richard Robinson (03:36):

They equated the two. And then I realised well the engineers doing Sizewell B and giving advice to lawyers were very careful. And even the scientists when they were putting in the risk level, left it all in the appendix. It was other people that stuck the two together. And that's in fact where the difficulty arose. Now that sort of caused me a reflection in which irritated me because I've thought about this for a long time and trying to put models together and so forth. I mean, one of the things we had realised for example, was that because we had David Howarth the professor of law and public policy out we sponsored into Melbourne in 2017, and the reason why we were interested in him because he had that book "Law as Engineering". And what he was pointing out is that the lawyers, particularly international UK and US lawyers, were consciously studying the design activities of engineers on the basis that the lawyers do the same as engineers. If somebody client turns up says, I got a problem or I want to do something, then in the circumstances what are the options and which is the best for the client? Now that's a design exercise. And I suddenly realised safety in design, well, that's a design exercise. That's the point. Consequence modeling is scientific, which drives the criticality analysis decision. And what the courts actually do post-event, it's not the level of risk that counts, it's a retrospective design review.

Gaye Francis (04:55):

To make sure that all reasonable practicable precautions were in place.

Richard Robinson (04:58):

Now if you look at it like that, you do consequences now just to work out what the critical things are, that is very scientific. And then you do safety and design to manage that consequence. And then if it all goes wrong post-event, you do a retrospective design review, which is what the lawyers are deliberately studying the engineers for. That's what David Howarth's point was. Now that has a couple of interesting little flow-ons because the consequence analysis, which I've always understood was scientific. You've listened to me ramble on about that for 10 years!

Gaye Francis (05:32):

A few more probably!

Richard Robinson (05:34):

Because basically we decided to stay away from major hazards because they were doing risk analysis, not consequence analysis, in the first instance, and therefore weren't demonstrating all reasonable practicable precautions were in place.

Gaye Francis (05:43):

I think just before you go on there, it's just important to know, that we've covered this in another podcast, that major hazards have gone to consequence modeling and consequence analysis primarily now.

Richard Robinson (05:54):

At least in Victoria. That's correct. I'm not aware of any other state doing it yet. And we did suggest that Engineers Australia in their role as the intellectual body of engineers should actually get their act together on this one lickity split, but that's another matter. But what was interesting about this was, you see the business of science is to know about things. So this is not an attack on scientists in any way because the better scientists know, the better engineers can do. That's the whole point of the exercise.

Gaye Francis (06:23):

The better you're able to design for those things.

Richard Robinson (06:25):

That's correct. And then the lawyers have decided they're going to consider what the engineers are doing and do design reviews of, at least, what the engineers have designed. That means there's a remarkable alignment going on. I mean obviously there's a bit of a flow between the scientists and the engineers because sometimes engineers turn more into scientists and vice versa about what can be done.

Gaye Francis (06:48):

And I think that process is a bit more back and forth, isn't it? But if you focus on the credible critical issues, that's sort of where you can get your design the most robust and it usually then designs for the lesser issues as well.

Richard Robinson (07:02):

Correct. And the other reason why this is actually important, all of a sudden it puts the responsibility of the respective parties in the right place because the scientists -- it is important they keep figuring out how the world behaves, how a gas cloud under certain circumstances will behave and all the modeling things that they wish to do -- but it's the engineer's responsibility to make sure that every reasonable practical control is in place to deal with that credible critical issue. And then it's the lawyer's responsibility to retrospectively test that understanding, because in an advanced industrial society, we do create the most enormous hazards. And when you think of where AI's going, I mean that's what they're actually talking about now. Because what an AI can do, it could do a much better job of the consequence modeling probably because it will take a whole lot of parameters into account. Will it do the design review? Now, that is an interesting question and I don't think people have thought about it because what the philosophical framework for that design and then the design review, that's never going to be the job of an AI. I would have thought.

Gaye Francis (08:04):

It's a really interesting question. I gave a board presentation last week and one of the board members asked, what's the role of AI and how as a board do we demonstrate due diligence around it? And I think it's going to go more as a governance and boards and things like that are going to have a responsibility to test the AI where it's going to be used. And I don't know that we can use it for safety critical things yet, but that's just sort of an opinion. I don't know how you put a quality assurance system around it to make sure that it is? But there's going to be some interesting questions around that and quality assurance and how boards govern AI going forward.

Richard Robinson (08:46):

Well, it fascinated me because remember the first, pretty much one of the first jobs you got with R2A as a young engineer was doing the SIL study, the safety integrity study on how two trains would get past each other on a single line track in New South Wales.

Gaye Francis (09:00):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (09:00):

And you had the job of basically testing every track, every intersection, every points and testing to see whether the watchdog that was being created would actually...

Gaye Francis (09:09):

Bark... Or bring up that the hazard existed.

Richard Robinson (09:15):

That's the sort of task you'd think they'd probably throw an AI. But are you going to trust an AI to make sure that every possible configuration is tested or are you going to choose a Gaye to do it in the future?

Gaye Francis (09:28):

<laughs> Well, I think that's where quality assurance comes in, doesn't it, Richard? Because you're going to have to have a confidence around the technology that you're going to use and the AI and the information that it gives out. You're going to have to test it in some way as part of your due diligence process to make sure that you've got confidence in the information that it's delivering to you.

Richard Robinson (09:46):

Well, you might remember my then business partner, Kevin, basically what he had to do... He worked out a process to make sure that none of the collisions or head-ons - all the train collisions - could occur. And then when the designer decided that was the way it was going to be designed, to use that test (they) had to dream up a different test in order to test whether or not what the designer put together...

Gaye Francis (10:12):

Actually worked.

Richard Robinson (10:13):

Actually worked. And so a different kind of risk model had to be put in place to examine what was being done by these large defense-based software players. And we had to dream up, well, Kevin was doing that part and I was doing the checking and you were doing the work as I recall.

Gaye Francis (10:31):

<laughs> But I think that's really interesting because I think those sort of things will require this independent check. And that's part of what, I guess, if you go back to our idea that the courts are testing after the event whether all reasonable practical precautions are in place, so that retrospective design review, they're looking for other tools and techniques to test the governance processes before the loss of control point in a way.

Richard Robinson (10:56):

Correct. So you need different ways of doing that. And I think we have talked about this in another podcast, but perhaps that's another one we should revisit? Particularly because, obviously from our point of view, the Victorian major hazard people have actually ditched what was the target level of risk ALARP process in favour of what we've always understood to be...

Gaye Francis (11:16):

So discounted the likelihood; they don't consider likelihood anymore. So it's consequence base. But we've said it in a number of our podcasts and we will continue to say there's a whole lot of tools and techniques out there that give you all different insights into risk issues or due diligence issues. It's not a one size fits all, it's that you have to think these things through and you will get different insight depending on what you use. So I think that's one of the key things that we would say is your retrospective design review, think about the questions that a lawyer might ask you in the event that an incident happens. And have you demonstrated due diligence?

Richard Robinson (11:58):

Yes. Well, I did observe I've worn my glasses today, so as I commented to Gaye earlier, she's actually been in focus for the entire session, which is nice.

Gaye Francis (12:06):

I hope my words as well as your vision! <laughs>

(12:09):

Alright, I think on that note, we might wrap podcast number one for season three here. Thank you for joining us and hope you can join us next time. Thank you.

Richard Robinson (12:19):

Thank you.

De-engineering of Technical Roles and Engineering Education & Philosophy (Season 2 Wrap)

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 2, Episode 10

In the final episode of Season 2, Richard and Gaye discuss the de-engineering of technical roles in organisations and engineering education and philosophy.

They reflect on their experience as expert witnesses at a recent hearing where technical knowledge was lacking in person, and they highlight the importance of having engineers involved in and/or advising on technical roles. They also discuss the de-engineering of organisations and the shift towards a more compliance-focused approach. They touch on the need for engineers to have a global view and the importance of questioning and thinking critically.  

Also discussed is the lack of emphasis on ethics in the engineering profession and the need for a holistic approach to problem-solving and the role of engineering philosophy in driving change. The episode concludes with a reminder of the importance of thinking and the need for engineers to embrace a philosophy of change.

 Read the full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis wrap up a few topics they've discussed throughout Season 2 and chat about de-engineering in organisations and engineering philosophy. Please enjoy the chat and if you do give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, get in touch via admin@r2a.com.au and look out for Season 3.

Gaye Francis (00:37):

Hi Richard, welcome to our last podcast for Season 2.

Richard Robinson (00:41):

Welcome Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:42):

Today we're not really sure what we're going to talk about. There's a few topics that we've sort of touched on in the podcast throughout this season and there's been some comments about de-engineering and engineering education, engineering philosophy, so we thought we'd make this a little bit of a mismatch.

Richard Robinson (01:02):

Well, and I think the core reason why it sort of popped up is when we were at the VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) hearing acting as an expert witness, the member actually asked the major hazards facility and the council and the major hazards regulator to provide information.

Gaye Francis (01:17):

Some technical information.

Richard Robinson (01:18):

Technical information. And what we sort of discovered was they all sent lawyers. There were no technical engineering type knowledge people there at all.

Gaye Francis (01:29):

Just clarifying that they weren't in the session, but our understanding was that the facility, the major hazard facility, had gone back to their technical people to confirm the understanding, but they were not represented as such at the hearings.

Richard Robinson (01:44):

And likewise with the major hazard regulator, the actual technical people giving the technical advice weren't there. They were being represented and interpreted by lawyers.

Gaye Francis (01:54):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (01:58):

And when it actually came down to the final hearing, in fact, I was the only technical expert witness there, which surprised me greatly because I would've thought the council, for example, would've thought to have their own technical expert witness and that was not the case. They were actually represented by a lawyer and a town planner officer.

Gaye Francis (02:21):

Who were both consultants to the council.

Richard Robinson (02:22):

Who were both consultants to the council.

Gaye Francis (02:24):

I think the other one was that they actually commented and said it during the hearing: Oh, we don't have that technical expertise.

Richard Robinson (02:31):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (02:33):

On a technical matter, which was a bit of a shock.

Richard Robinson (02:35):

Which was the whole point of the exercise. And obviously the town planner and the lawyer's knowledge of town planning, legal and past cases, and all that sort of thing, is obviously something which we had very little knowledge about and chose not to comment on at all. But when it actually came to the technical matters over-pressures and how these things would happen and what sort of controls you could put in engineering design and safety design, all these other matters, it simply wasn't considered, so far as we can tell from their point of view. Now, when you stand back and look at this, this is something that's been happening in local government for some time and we've noticed this all over the place. I mean, once upon a time you used to have the town clerk who did the administration and a municipal or city engineer who ran the outside things, but that means they also did planning permits, building permits and everything.

(03:24):

These days that's all been disaggregated and so now you have the building permits basically run by building surveyors and the planning permits run by town planners and you have no holistic overview of what can be done or how things could be done to manage things. And so when some curious recommendation, from our point of view, pops out to say the way to manage risk from an explosion overpressure is just to reduce the number of people that live there, rather than building the building so it can withstand and prevent the hazards from actually causing pain and suffering to people - it just wasn't contemplated so far as we could tell.

(03:59):

Now this is something that's been popping up all over the place. It actually has higher level consequences for your society. What seems to happen in local government, at least, is that all the engineers have basically been pushed into water and wastewater and sewage and stormwater, but they've all been pushed into silos. There's no overarching philosophy, engineering philosophy put in.

(04:21):

Now you might ask the question, what's engineering philosophy? I do have to report that as a group, engineers really haven't been that interested in the subject. I tend to mention it every now and then to you and you sort of roll your eyes at me, to be fair.

Gaye Francis (04:33):

Richard has been trying to write an engineering philosophy book and course for, I've been working with him for over 20 years and I think he's been trying to do it in all of that time since I've been working with him.

Richard Robinson (04:44):

Well, yes, and I keep trying different universities trying to get them interested and to say they're not particularly interested in me, but that's the way universities have gone - if you don't have a PhD these days, you really don't get much of a look into any of these courses, as we have discovered. It doesn't matter how intellectually useful, what you're saying is so far as we can tell.

Gaye Francis (05:01):

It is an academic qualification.

Richard Robinson (05:03):

Yeah, that's right. And I guess in that sense there used to be a fair transfer between industry and tertiary education and engineers. I haven't seen that occurring as much as it used to. I can quite distinctly remember I was at Monash as a student doing engineering, they actually appointed a professor who was definitely industry based and they did that as a matter of policy as I recall correctly. Whether that's still happening or not, I get the feeling it's not, I think academia has become very closed, let's put it that way.

(05:38):

Anyway, the point about all this though is you see what's engineering and what's engineering philosophy and what's engineering education about now? This is something I've had a bit to do about, I mean a long time ago before we started the risk engineering, well, it was the Loss Control section of the Management Branch of Victoria Division, which turned into the Risk Engineering Society, but we're also doing things running engineering education programs for engineers; CPD, basically, for engineers, and we got a lot of very interesting speakers, one of the talks was Bernie Callan giving me help on a couple of things too, because he was interested in the subject as well. But I also dug out some papers by Sir John Monash. He gave a very interesting paper on engineer education, his retiring address as the President of the Victoria Institute of Engineers, and he was explaining how the need for engineers to have sort of a global view on what was going on, and this was before he basically went off to the first World War and became a very successful General, because, again, he had a very global view of how things should be thought about.

(06:40):

Now, from my point of view, engineering philosophy has always been the philosophy of change, meaning if you don't like it, change it. And one of the characteristics of engineers, and I know I've talked to a number of spouses of engineers and one of the things they always observe about them, they've said, is when something they don't think is quite right, they go and fix it. They go and do something about it. That's one of the characteristics that they've always observed.

Gaye Francis (07:03):

I think it's a curiosity and ability to question things if you don't, you don't just take it as the status quo.

Richard Robinson (07:10):

But that's one of the problems we've been having with engineer education because we've been running some post-grad programs for different universities at different times and one of the things we've noticed is some of these graduate engineers we've been getting haven't been as curious or wanting to change as much. They just want whatever the information is so they can go and apply it, and want it to be a cookbook recipe and, if you like, that's one of the frustration we have with the whole ALARP business, from our point of view, there's a process; you use quantified risk assessment, use a target level of risk, if you don't satisfy your criteria, then you do something rather than sort of saying, is there something else that needs to be done?

Gaye Francis (07:45):

I think that's being extended more into industry as well. A number of clients that we talk to and potential clients that we talk to: What's the answer? What's the process to get the answer? And risk's one of those subjects that it's not a cookie cutter approach, it's not black and white. You will get subtly different answers to every problem you apply it to. And so you've got to think and thinking is hard (we touched on this in another podcast) and we've found that people want a process. What's the process that I need to do to get the answer? And I don't know whether it's because it's gone down a more compliance or an audit type process, black and white, it's right or wrong. But in risk it's not right or wrong. It's about thinking it through and putting in the best option that you can.

Richard Robinson (08:39):

Well, I think that's the point. Remember how we had promoted the Professor of Public Policy and Law from Cambridge University, David Howeth, and the point he made was, and this is where the big law firms in the UK and US have gone to, and that it's law as engineering and what he meant by that, and they're literally following the engineering design process: A client turns up they've got a problem or they want to do something, in the circumstances what are the options? Well, what are the options? And in the circumstances, which is the best? That's a straight-out engineering design option. It's not a cookie cutter approach in the sense of 'here's the process, we'll go through and we'll definitely get you the best answer', because you don't what the options are until you look for them. And then we don't what your circumstances are and so what might actually be the best thing to do at that time. And it can change.

Gaye Francis (09:27):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (09:29):

But that's the best advice you're going to get. Now that is what the Consulting Engineers used to do, but they've stopped calling themselves Consulting Engineers who've turned into Consult Australia. I don't quite understand what that is. And they've dropped their code of ethics. I mean for those of you don't remember these things, I do, but because I used to talk to Ben Fink, the Managing Director of GHD, he was very strong on this, to be a member of the ACA, the Consulting Engineers, the majority ownership had to be engineers who were corporate members of Engineers Australia. And the reason for that was to ensure that the code of ethics of Engineers Australia, the consulting engineering practice had to comply with the code of ethics of Engineers Australia, which basically said you had to put the interest of a client first. Once you just become owned by general shareholders, it's all about the money for the shareholders. Nobody cares about the ethics.

(10:18):

If to pull a plug on the job is the commercially intelligent thing to do for your shareholders, then you do that. Whereas from a consulting engineering viewpoint, you have to finish the job in the best interest of a client, even if it meant you might lose some money. And you can only do that if the majority of the directors are actually bound by a code of ethics. And then the question becomes what's a profession? Well, generally it's applying a code of ethics and if you can't apply a code of ethics, then what are you?

Gaye Francis (10:46):

But I think that has dropped down even in Engineers Australia, the code of ethics is not as promoted as it once was.

Richard Robinson (10:53):

Well, Ben Fink made it absolutely crystal clear to me, although he said there was three, although I think there's actually five. Stick to your area of competence, no kickbacks, he who pays you is your client, be responsible for your own negligence and give credit where credit's due. And wow, has that one been gone missing lately?

Gaye Francis (11:11):

Yes. And that was instilled in Richard and being Richard's business partner that had been instilled in me from a very, very young age as an engineer, young engineer. I think what we're also seeing, and maybe this is the reason why people are looking for more that cookie cutter approach and those systems and processes in place, is the idea that organisations are being de-engineered. We are coming across a lot of people in engineering roles or technical roles that don't have a technical background.

Richard Robinson (11:41):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (11:42):

And so they're looking for processes and systems to put in place to be able to understand, but they don't have the background to be able to question. Is that the right idea?

Richard Robinson (11:56):

That's one way of saying it.

Gaye Francis (11:59):

Of those in technical organisations. So we've come across quite a lot of people that are running big technical projects that don't have any technical background.

Richard Robinson (12:11):

It can be done if you have the right technical advice, but that means you're going to have the right people working with you.

Gaye Francis (12:15):

So it's about that team approach. Again, you can't do these things in isolation.

Richard Robinson (12:20):

I suppose there's two other points I'll just make in passing. There was this thing, I think it was the University of Wollongong actually who started it and then the medical faculties took it over, but one of the things they sort of said and it was a frustrations I had when I was doing engineering was that you were taught all this science basically and you were basically made an applied scientist, in effect, and all the ethics stuff and all the legal stuff that you need to know to be effective in practice, you learned after you'd got a qualification of some sort. And you'd just been pumped science at you and you didn't really understand what use it was going to be, and I've got to say an awful lot it wasn't of a great use the way my career went, it never made sense to me.

(12:58):

Now, the University of Wollongong, I think it was, decided that what they would do first was the first thing they ever give a bunch of engineers in first year the first thing you got was a design exercise and you found out what you needed to know in order to make it work. And then you need to work out, well, if I need to know this, I'd better go and study that. And that's what the medical faculty started doing. They take a bunch of first year students and show them some poor soul on a bed who's not well and they say: What's wrong with them?

Gaye Francis (13:26):

What are you going to do?

Richard Robinson (13:27):

And force them to understand what they needed to know in order to bring about a successful conclusion. I understand the medical, that's one of the reasons why we started an education branch in Victoria because we were trying to expand that sort of understanding to the local universities. Don't think it actually succeeded, although every now and then sometimes you see a spark of life in a different place you weren't expecting. But this overall philosophical view, it does seem to me to be important, still is. And the other way I think it might've popped up, if you start the engineering society as a whole, one of the consequences of trying to fix that is to start registering engineers. I would've preferred to be the other way around that the engineering philosophy was still endemic in society and the engineers weren't registered. But if the only way to actually get the engineering philosophy back into the system is to register them and force it back into the system that way, then that might be a necessary consequence. But I'm still not absolutely sure that's going to work.

Gaye Francis (14:23):

But that's not what they're using registration for engineers for. It's a liability.

Richard Robinson (14:29):

No... But it has that consequence whether or not that's what was intended. And certainly the way the engineers were going about it, it's more about being a status thing rather than a functional thing. Whereas I'm more interested functionally. But it's like us, we don't find that being registered in Queensland or Victoria is essential to us because from the point of view of signing off on the design, which is where the crunch really comes, we can't do that anyway. And by the time we've finished doing our due diligence approach, everybody's got to have agreed that it's a good idea and then the individual design flows from that.

Gaye Francis (15:01):

Yes. So I think taking all of this and wrapping up our last podcast for the season, it's really about engineering is about that philosophy of change and being able to change things. And to be able to change things, you've got to think.

Richard Robinson (15:16):

Well, Karl Popper in is a book Objective Knowledge, he makes the point, he gives an example of a mechanical engineer and said: Look, when you're designing a society, no mechanical engineer would design a car without testing it hard and running it through all sorts of things. You don't just get the design, get it right the first time and everything works. You work hard to make it function. I mean, (Elon) Musk just got his rocket off again, they both blew up, but the separation that got into space, it really is a progressive evolutionary design and I suspect the next one will actually get there. This takes time and it's hard work. Societal change and issues require the same effort. And for the life of me, I've never understood how that understanding which sort of exists in philosophy, generally, isn't understood to apply in engineering philosophy. Philosophical terms too. But that's just me, obviously not everybody frets about this stuff.

Gaye Francis (16:19):

Alright, so I think on that note, we might finish our podcast for today. Richard, Thank you for joining us for Season 2. We hope you've enjoyed it! And we will be back for Season 3 very soon.

Richard Robinson (16:33):

Thanks Gaye.

Gaye Francis (16:34):

Thanks Richard.

Nuclear Power Safety: How The Finnish Get It Right Before They Proceed

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 2, Episode 9

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss nuclear power safety with reference to Finland. 

Gaye shares her personal experience as an exchange student in Finland and her connection to the Olkiluoto Power Station. They discuss Finland's approach to nuclear power, including their focus on managing nuclear waste with a whole-of-life appreciation for nuclear power, and that they involve the community as stakeholders in decision-making. They also highlight Finland's commitment to safety and their precaution-based approach rather than risk-based. 

Read full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss nuclear power safety, especially in relation to Finland and how they focus on getting it right before proceeding.

(00:18):

Please enjoy their chat, and if you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any comments or topic ideas, please get in touch via admin@r2a.com..com.au.

Richard Robinson (00:36):

Welcome Gaye to your session on nuclear safety.

Gaye Francis (00:40):

Oh, thank you, Richard.

Richard Robinson (00:42):

Now, the reason why we're doing this is that a long time ago, or perhaps a short time ago, depending on how you look at these things, Gaye was an exchange student of Finland and one of her host fathers was in fact the safety manager manager for the Olkiluoto, you better pronounce it more correctly.

Gaye Francis (00:59):

Olkiluoto

Richard Robinson (01:01):

Olkiluoto Power Station, which is a nuclear power station in Finland. Now interestingly, Gaye's taking her whole family, husband and two kids, on a holiday to Finland and she's going to go to the host family because they've been keeping communication ever since. And her daughters apparently deserve to see a real Christmas in Finland, which is about as chill as you're going to get!

Gaye Francis (01:25):

Hoping for a white Christmas, Richard.

Richard Robinson (01:26):

Really peculiarity, we're just doing some work for Tasports and it turns out that Tasports are having their two new ferries built at, I can't remember how you pronounce that exactly.

Gaye Francis (01:36):

Rauma.

Richard Robinson (01:37):

Rauma, which is a town of about 5,000 people or something. It's not a big place. And you're actually staying where they're building the ferries for Tasmania, which is even more peculiar.

Gaye Francis (01:48):

Yes, Finland's not a very big place, but they do some pretty heavy lifting in industrial terms.

Richard Robinson (01:54):

Well, more than that, just in educational terms, Finland's one of those remarkable places where teachers have, for example, have a very high standing, a very high status. And university, if you qualify, it doesn't matter where on the planet you are, if you qualify, you can be educated, there free, but you have to obviously achieve the academic standard that Finns expect of you. And they just find that that approach to life actually substantially enhances the way in which people look at them in the world. I've also been advised because there was an interesting sort of holiday trip going from up the Gulf of Bothnia to St. Petersburg a while back, and I made some passing remark and Gaye just looked at me blankly and said: Finns do not holiday in Russia.

Gaye Francis (02:33):

They do not holiday in Russia, that's definitely right.

Richard Robinson (02:37):

I'm sure that's probably reinforced in recent times.

Gaye Francis (02:42):

So back to the topic. <laughs>

(02:45):

So one of the interesting things that, and I gave a presentation probably 2015, so a number of years ago, and it was when the nuclear power debate was happening in Australia and I said to Richard, I don't understand. You know the Finns have had nuclear power for a long time.

(03:01):

As you said, I went on exchange and that was 1990 that I went on exchange. So during high school. So the Finns have had nuclear power for a very long time and been able to manage it.

Richard Robinson (03:13):

But they actually do it better than that because they're one of the few places that actually decide that they're going to manage their own nuclear waste.

Gaye Francis (03:18):

They do. And that's what I think one of the key things for me is, they really have a whole-of-life appreciation of nuclear power. So their main research area is actually where to put the spent fuel rods and how they're going to store that and manage that in years to come.

(03:40):

So Olkiluoto is on the west coast of Finland, quite down south about four hours from Helsinki, and I stayed in a little town called Eurajoki, and it's in the municipality of Eurajoki, and the community are definitely aware of the nuclear power station in their community and they actually lobby for it. One of the interesting things was, and we've talked about stakeholders and interested parties before, the community is definitely a key stakeholder in the decisions of the nuclear power station and whether new reactors are built and things like that. And they actually have a right of veto. So if the community doesn't think that this should be done, then it's not done, which is really interesting.

(04:28):

The other thing, so Olkiluoto 3 has just come online in, I'm just looking at my date here, April 2023, it started full regular production, and that's after an 18 year delay. So it was approved in 2005 and it's just come online in 2023. And one of the key reasons was there was some safety concerns around it and basically the regulator in Finland said: No-go until you can prove otherwise that this is safe to go.

Richard Robinson (04:57):

So the commercial imperatives do not rule the day, the safety imperatives rule the day.

Gaye Francis (05:01):

Yes, absolutely. And there's a lot of media and stuff online that basically says this has gone way, way over budget as you could imagine with an 18 year delay and cost blowouts and everything. But the safety regulator, which is the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland, just basically said no go. And it's sort of interesting because for Finland, as Richard said, they used to get about 60% I think, of their coal from Russia. So they don't want to rely on Russia to get coal to produce electricity, but they're also marketing this, or I dunno whether marketing's the right word, but also advertising this as one of the greatest single climate acts in Finland. So they're going to nuclear power to address the climate change issues.

Richard Robinson (05:54):

Well, also they're up to, I think on EVs, I think aren't they over 50% now? I think.

Gaye Francis (05:59):

Yeah, so they're very, very advanced. And I think when we had this conversation in Australia, I just feel that there's a lack of maturity. Yes, there's been some pretty awful incidents around nuclear power and there's been some lessons learned, but there's some countries that are really, really doing it well that we could learn from. And I don't think you have to start from scratch to be able to plan for that.

(06:26):

But one of the key takeaways for Finland was that that final disposal, and they basically go from reactor safety and the management of the spent fuel. It's actually all done onsite in Eurajoki at the facility. So it's disposed of in sealed, encapsulated steel containers and then finally disposed of, just put in the bedrock.

Richard Robinson (06:58):

Yeah, down quite a decent distance down.

Gaye Francis (06:59):

Oh, very, very distant distance down.

Richard Robinson (07:03):

But they specifically dug that out for the purpose of containing...

Gaye Francis (07:07):

Spent fuel rods.

Richard Robinson (07:08):

And it's so far down that the background radiation and all those sorts of things is not relevant.

Gaye Francis (07:12):

That's right.

(07:13):

This is monitored and they've got QA systems in place to monitor their staff for safety, for radiation exposure. They also do community testing and stuff like that. I have been down into the nuclear power site and you get kitted up in all your (protection wear). You go down in a very, very a bus sort of thing. And it's very interesting as a geeky engineer!

Richard Robinson (07:39):

Well, you compare that to the way which you might remember the low level radiation storage facility we vaguely had a consideration of in Victoria, you might recall that? And so far as I know our low level radiation is still being stored in drums out in the open in various places, and we don't actually have a way of disposing of it. And we've just withdrawn from the whole thing.

Gaye Francis (07:59):

So sort of away and forgotten.

Richard Robinson (08:02):

Yep. Well, we haven't done anything about it, so presume it's just accumulating in the wrong places around the place. And yet if you look at the way the Finns do it, you say: We've got a problem, let's think it through and let's get it right and do it properly the first time.

Gaye Francis (08:15):

And it is that very much precaution-based approach. It's not a risk-based target level of safety approach. It's either right and you proceed or it's not there and you don't go any further until it's fixed.

(08:31):

Which I think is a very, and as I said, I went to Finland in 1990 and the power station had been there for a long time. And one of my host dads was the safety manager there and they were passionate about it. It was safety first at all costs for both their workers and the community as a whole.

Richard Robinson (08:52):

Yeah, it is rather interesting, isn't it? I mean, this is the second time you've been back, I believe?

Gaye Francis (08:56):

I've been back three or four or five times to Finland. It was a life-changing experience exchange and yeah, I've taken my husband, he's been to the nuclear power station. He did say to me that probably not a day out for the two girls at 10yo and 7yo, but maybe next time I take them back I could get them involved in that. But we might do the drive by the Rauma shipyards and have a look at the new Spirit of Tasmania being built. That'd be pretty cool.

Richard Robinson (09:26):

Yeah, it's just fascinating, isn't it? It's fascinating that the Tasmanians, when they went scouring the planet to build ferries basically decided on Finland. It does tell you a bit about the society and the culture as a whole, and it does reflect a bit on the Nordics generally. I mean, as I said (in previous episode), I was at the AMPI conference, the Australasian Marine Institutes, as a keynote speaker and the majority of the women marine pilots were Nordics, I've got to say that. And that was just an obvious thing. And they talk about particularly well educated and competent people. You just realised how obvious it was.

Gaye Francis (09:59):

It's just part of their life. I mean, you jump on a ferry between Finland and Sweden, you jump on a ferry between Estonia and Finland. That's just getting around on ships is what you do.

(10:13):

So I hope you found that interesting. That's sort of just a little bit of a takeaway that I had from my time in Finland. And as an engineer, I always recoil a little bit when we don't even seem to be able to have a nuclear power debate in Australia. There's a lot of good stuff happening out there. And I think that we can learn from other cultures and other places as well.

Richard Robinson (10:40):

I think the Finns, particularly in their educational program. In one of my former lifes, I sort of started the education branch in Victoria division of Engineers' Australia, and getting the engineers interested in education, the philosophy, education, I found it quite a difficult thing to do. And I've always, always been remarkably impressed with the Finns. I forget which Australian University has got a Finnish connection. Actually, I remember seeing it advertised at Melbourne Airport when I was coming out one time.

Gaye Francis (11:04):

Okay. I'm not sure.

Richard Robinson (11:05):

I can't remember, but one of the Australian universities has.

Gaye Francis (11:09):

There you go. So thank you for joining us again, and we'll be back next time with hopefully another interesting podcast.

Richard Robinson (11:15):

Thank you.

Safety Culture & Women's PPE

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 2, Episode 8

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss the importance of safety culture for women's personal protective equipment (PPE) in the workplace. 

Gaye shares her experience of encountering ill-fitting and uncomfortable PPE during her consulting career, which led her to advocate for better-fitting PPE for women. She explains the journey of founding Apto PPE, a women's and maternity fit-for-purpose safety workwear business, with the support of R2A. They discuss the challenges of getting proper fitting PPE for women in the market and the slow uptake of these options. 

They also highlight the importance of organisations prioritising the safety of women onsite; that from a WHS/OHS legislation perspective the objective is to achieve the highest level of protection, organisations need to ask: “Is this reasonably practicable?” The answer should be “Why not?”; not “Why would we?” 

You can purchase Apto PPE via our online store, or contact Gaye to discuss your specific needs.

Full episode transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss safety culture in terms of women's PPE and Gaye's role in founding Apto PPE, a women's and maternity fit-for-purpose safety workwear business.

(00:22):

We hope you enjoy their chat. As always, if you do, please give us a rating. Also, please subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any questions or topic ideas, please get in touch via admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:39):

Hi Richard and welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:43):

Hi Gaye. We're back again.

Gaye Francis (00:45):

We are back again. Today we're going to talk about something that's probably dear to my heart and you've been on the journey with me and that's about women's PPE onsite and the safety of women onsite. And I guess I've been an advocate for this for 15 years or so, maybe a bit more. And the journey that we've been on, and the setting up of Apto PPE, which R2A have supported for such a long time and continue to support, I'm happy to say.

(01:17):

I guess it all started as a Women in Engineering project many, many years ago when I was National Deputy Chair. And there was a project of some girls coming and saying that there was no proper fitting PPE for women. All the PPE for women was ill-fitting. And I can say that I have experienced that myself in my consulting career.

Richard Robinson (01:43):

I can confirm that I have witnessed this. I have actually sent photos of you to your new husband in your ill-fitting PPE they parked you in when we were in New Zealand one time inspecting things.

Gaye Francis (01:52):

It wasn't really attractive and it certainly wasn't comfortable to wear and it wasn't safe. One of my clear recollections is for being in a mine in New South Wales and I have quite a small foot, I'm a size seven ladies and I needed to have gumboots to go underground to have a look and my actual steel cap boots that were my own supply actually fitted inside the gumboots, the smallest gumboot that they had. And I remember walking around the mine and my foot coming out of that gumboot and my gumboot being left there. And I said to Richard, I said: If anything happens, Richard, I can't get out of here if my gumboots don't stay on. And I recall you saying to me: It's all right. I'll pick you up under my arm and run with you. So I sort of felt good that I wouldn't be left behind.

(02:44):

But it sort of made me think about why didn't women have proper fitting and fit for purpose PPE on site. So as I said, we are involved in Women in Engineering and one of the girls came and said: Ehy don't we have any of the proper fitting PPE for women onsite. Shoes was one thing, but also shirts and pants. And so we started to do a little bit of research. And the research that we came up with was there were a few organisations that had inverted commas "women's PPE", but all that they seemed to do was change the buttons from one side to the other. They weren't any different design, they weren't a different shape.

Richard Robinson (03:26):

For the males you probably don't realise that women's buttons actually do up on the other side.

Gaye Francis (03:30):

So when we talk to the larger organisations or the larger manufacturers of PPE, they said: Oh yes, we have a unisex range. So I sort of thought, well, women come in all different shapes and sizes and we have different body parts that are in different places and things like that that men's shirts don't necessarily fit the female form. So we did this pilot study through Women in Engineering. We had some designers from Challenger University in WA who came and did some prototypes for us. And that sort of went on and then we launched it at the international conference in Adelaide and it was really, really well received. And so Women in Engineering then did a trial with John Holland at the time and we got some really good feedback. But as a not-for-profit organisation, where does it go after that?

(04:22):

So we sort of started Apto PPE to see if we could get some proper fitting female PPE that was designed and tested by women that actually fitted the women's shape but also looked a bit different to what was on the market. No pockets on the breast line, no pockets on your thighs where you are a bit bigger. We need things in different shapes and sizes. So that's sort of how Apto started. And I remember at the time three of us had the idea of to start Apto and we called Richard down the back of the office and said: Richard, we've got an idea for you. And that's where we pitched it. I'm not sure he had any chance of...

Richard Robinson (05:05):

I was not in a position to say no, as I recall.

Gaye Francis (05:09):

You also thought it was a good idea at the time.

Richard Robinson (05:12):

Yea, well!

Gaye Francis (05:13):

And it sort of fitted with R2A's due diligence aspect as well in that it was safety onsite and how do we make sure that women are safe onsite so far as is reasonably practicable.

Richard Robinson (05:24):

I could actually identify vaguely with it because kind of lanky and having shirts that are a bit too short for you, you're just not comfortable. And the same thing happens when you're buying PPE for males. I mean I have to have an oversized body in order to get the right length arms and things like that. So you just notice these things and I presume women who sometimes fret about these things from my observation, more than a lot of males do, it would've obviously have much greater concern.

Gaye Francis (05:50):

So yeah, we've always pushed Apto from the safety aspect and making sure that women were safe onsite. And I think as you said, if you have Ill-fitting PPE that's too big in some areas it can get caught on machinery. It just gets in the way of you being able to do your job.

(06:10):

But one of the interesting things, as I said, we started Apto almost 15 years ago and there was not much on the market at that time.

Richard Robinson (06:21):

And the point I do remember, you were quite clear at the time, you weren't expecting to make money, but what you were hoping to do is change the world.

Gaye Francis (06:28):

Change the world. We've all got those aspirations whether we get there or not. And I think Apto has done that. There is certainly a lot more PPE options on the market now for females than there ever were. And it's really interesting to see, but the takeup is still really slow.

Richard Robinson (06:48):

Oh, and you've tried to get into a couple of organisations where, shall we say, the PPE operation is actually operated by a male who really doesn't get the point that women would like some different stuff around.

Gaye Francis (06:58):

I agree. And the procurement processes that go with it. And because they're still a minority, you are looking for specific PPE for tens of women rather than hundreds of women. So that bulk...

Richard Robinson (07:12):

Although I've got to say the pregnancy gear has actually been quite well accepted.

Gaye Francis (07:18):

That's correct. And one of the interesting things that a couple of organisations have done is actually put in a maternity bank in their organisation. So rather than having a personal issue PPE, they've had a bank of maternity pants and shirts from our range that the HR area actually keep. And so when you're pregnant and you change sizes during your pregnancy, you can go and get the size that fits you now and then in a couple of months time you go and get the next size if you need it. So that's a really interesting initiative I think from a number of Queensland organisations, mining organisations up in Gladstone that have done that.

(07:55):

So I think from Apto's viewpoint, we are sticking around to challenge the big guys that it's still not good enough. And even these 15 years later, I went to a NAWIC (National Association of Women In Construction) International Women's Day event in March this year, and they were talking about that we are still challenged on the basics in the construction industry; female facilities, toilet facilities, and change rooms on site. And PPE was still there (as an issue). And that was really mind blowing to me because I thought people had embraced that and organisations were just getting on with it. But I think it still shows that there's some women's workwear out there that is still unisex workwear that's sold as women's wear that not necessarily designed to fit a woman's shape and size.

(08:51):

You also went to an AMPI conference, Australian Marine Pilots conference, in October, I think it was, in Perth, and you listened to one of the... They were called the WISTA Group and they're the Women's International Shipping and Trading Association. And it was just a women's session on...

Richard Robinson (09:08):

Well, these are women/female marine pilots and marine pilotage is a particularly blokey sort of a place, I've got to say. Although the new president of AMPI's female. But the one that was particularly impressive was the female marine pilot from Papua New Guinea because that's a very paternal society. And to be a female marine pilot of Papua New Guinea, it was truly impressive. I wasn't so surprised by the Finnish and some of the Norwegians and the Nordic countries having female marine pilots. But there are some cultures where to be a female marine pilot is absolutely quite remarkable. It means you've been a ship's master generally on international shipping. So it's really quite impressive.

Gaye Francis (09:47):

But one of the issues that they were still bringing up was Ill-fitting PPE when we are in the 1920s - gosh, that's really a faux pas isn't it? The 2020s that would be! And we're still having these conversations when there's so much stuff that should be done. So from R2A's viewpoint and Apto's viewpoint, we're asking the question: Why shouldn't females have proper fitting, safe workwear onsite? Why wouldn't they?

Richard Robinson (10:19):

Well, from our point of view, it's been the WHS question. If the objective is to achieve the highest level of protection, is this reasonably practicable? The question is: Why not? But when you actually go to industry and talk to people, the reason is: Why would we? Which is the wrong way around and always has been.

Gaye Francis (10:39):

So that's Apto's challenge to organisations out there is make your women safe on site. There is options out there and there's quite a few options out there. They are smaller organisations, they're not the big guys, but there's some really good fitting female PPE out there. So make you girls safe on site.

Richard Robinson (10:59):

I think it goes a bit further than that. If the women in the office aren't happy, life gets more difficult. I recommend keeping the women in the office and onsite cheerful, life goes better.

Gaye Francis (11:10):

Well that shouldn't be the primary reason, but yes, that's right Richard.

Richard Robinson (11:14):

It does.

Gaye Francis (11:15):

Alright, so thank you for joining us today and listening to my rant. I hope you found it interesting and if Apto can help in any way, I'm more than happy to talk Apto further with anybody that's interested. So have a great day.

Richard Robinson (11:30):

Thanks Gaye.

Has WHS Legislation & Risk Management Standards stopped people thinking?

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 2, Episode 7

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss whether the WHS legislation and Risk Management Standards have hindered critical thinking in organisations. 

They observe that some organisations have become stagnant and resistant to change, relying on third-party consultants to handle risk management instead of actively engaging in the process themselves. They emphasise that risk management should be a line management function and that organisations need to adopt processes and procedures rather than simply outsourcing them. 

They also discuss the importance of curiosity in risk management and the need for organisations to embrace a variety of tools and techniques to gain different insights into risk issues. They caution against relying solely on single processes and techniques, as they may not capture all potential risks, particularly rare critical ones. 

Read the full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan Barrow (00:03):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss whether the WHS legislation and risk management standards have stopped people thinking. We hope you enjoy their chat. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, and if you have any feedback or topic ideas, get in touch via admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:43):

Hi Richard. Welcome to another podcast session. Today we're going to talk about has the WHS and risk management standard stopped people thinking?

Richard Robinson (00:55):

Yes, and that is a big subject and it's one which has actually puzzled us greatly because we've been watching a lot of organisations go into a form of stasis, which apparently is a word which Gaye doesn't use very often, but by stasis I mean they've actually got a fixed process and they're not going to change it even though there's evidence to say they possibly should.

Gaye Francis (01:16):

Or it's not being as useful as it could be in giving the results that they needed to deliver.

Richard Robinson (01:21):

And we've wondered why this might be the case. And we've noticed with a couple of large organisations that what seems to have happened is that this whole risk area has become so important to senior management that they've basically said, well, look, this is all too hard for us, so what we're going to do is employ people, put a process in place and it'll all happen and we won't have to think about it anymore.

Gaye Francis (01:40):

But when you say employ people, you mean third parties as in consultants or advisors that give the advice and then walk away?

Richard Robinson (01:46):

Well, they actually try to, yes. And they walk away. And our observational, the whole point of the WHS legislation and environmental legislation and company law is to say, no, you can't walk away if you are the decision maker, if you are the mind of the corporation, you have to actually be responsible. And this whole thrust of legislation the last 10 years has been hammering that point harder and harder and harder.

Gaye Francis (02:07):

And I think we've covered it in another podcast, is that risk management is a line management function.

Richard Robinson (02:14):

It's always been that.

Gaye Francis (02:15):

And that's where the reliability.

Richard Robinson (02:17):

That was that point I failed to mention in another session because I do remember going to an AREMA (American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association) conference, it must've been the late 1990s, and I was listening to all these insurance people and they'd expanded themselves into risk management because that's how that sort of area came from where the risk management came from. My question was, when are you going to drop the insurance term and just make it risk management and make risk management the line management function? If you've ever asked a question at a large conference and the speakers have just looked back at you, the panel, and it's been a stony silence, that was the one that was the stony silence.

Gaye Francis (02:50):

Right. So you didn't get a response?

Richard Robinson (02:52):

I did not get a response!

Gaye Francis (02:56):

Now you've lost my train of thought. Okay. So yeah, it's a line management function and the organisation has to adopt the processes. And the one thing that we have seen fail is that you can get third parties to put in processes and procedures to do things, but unless the organisation adopts it, then it's useless.

Richard Robinson (03:21):

Yeah. It's got to be something people want to embrace in the first place. We're seeing people just try to force people to do things and that doesn't work. They've got to want to do it. And the other thing we've noticed with the risk management standard is people just push the risk management standard approach. And remember, we sort of hammered this point before, the point is that all reasonable practical precautions - ALL - so you've got to go through all the different ways ideas can be found. I mean, the legislation, for example, tries to do the generative thing saying, you must talk to people, you must consult widely. But that doesn't mean to say you can't have technical process where you've got technical experts looking at the core issues and things like that. And indeed, senior management should know about some of these things and should think about these things. Our frustration with senior execs not knowing the hazards, I mean, I shouldn't pick on lawyers, but I do remember meeting a lawyer of a very large underground mining company back in the 2000s; he'd never been underground, he'd never seen the dangers and the risks that the people who generated the wealth that were supporting them were actually involved in. And I never quite understood that. I mean, we have the same thing with marine pilots. You've got marine pilot boards who've never been out on a pilotage to see what the marine pilot's actually doing.

Gaye Francis (04:28):

And I think that's one of the key things, isn't it? They should know about those things and if you're a member of the board, you have a responsibility to inform yourself to do that and make sure you're getting the right information from your senior executive to make sure you can make informed decisions.

(04:45):

But just going back to the tools and techniques, and I think that's one of the ways that R2A is different and we often come unstuck when a client comes to us and asks for something that this is the way we want things done. And even though it doesn't quite make sense to us. So there's a whole lot of different tools and techniques. As you said, there's generative techniques; there's the technical hazops, and fmeas; there's threatened vulnerability studies. And I always say at the end of Richard's courses, which we do through Engineering Education Australia, is be aware there's a whole lot of tools and techniques out there. They will all provide insight for you.

Richard Robinson (05:20):

And none of them are wrong.

Gaye Francis (05:21):

None of them are wrong, but they do provide different insight. You need to be aware of the pros and cons and you got to pick the tool that works best to solve the problem. And I think some organisations are getting unstuck or becoming unstuck because they have a process that you do for risk management.

Richard Robinson (05:39):

Often the risk management standard.

Gaye Francis (05:41):

Which is the way to do all risk management tasks and it's not providing the value for money, it's not providing the insight that they need to make their organisation safe.

Richard Robinson (05:52):

It's worse than that. They're spinning the wheels at great costs than expense to the organisation. And what's probably worse is that the really competent people who are actually trying to think this stuff through it causes a blockage and stops those competent people from actually making substantive and useful change.

Gaye Francis (06:07):

So yeah, I think some of those processes have stopped people thinking, haven't they?

Richard Robinson (06:12):

Yep. I mean, one of the things people ask me at different times, what makes a competent risk person and the answer I usually give them is very Rudyard Kipling answer: insatiable curiosity. Again, Gaye always looked at me strange when I say that because that's from my point of view, it's one of your underlying characteristics. It's the kind of person... They're doing something, and we've hired lots of engineers over time, so you and I have watched different engineers doing things in different ways, for example, and some of them get so focused inside the thing that they don't sort of become aware of what's happening around them. Whereas the one that looks up and sees other things happening and wonders, well, I'm doing this, sure, but that's happening over there and that's not quite consistent with what's going over there. Should I have a way of aligning this? And that's what I mean by a satiable curiosity. It's that nosiness. After watching your program of life, I've got a funny feeling that may be genetic as your daughters have the similar traits, but that curiosity is something, and not all people have it. I haven't quite understood this one. It's almost like a childlike nosiness.

Gaye Francis (07:19):

It's an ability to question, isn't it? And not being afraid potentially of the consequences that come that way, speaking up, but also being aware of the bigger picture.

Richard Robinson (07:30):

But an organisation that can let people like that prosper is a complex organisation.

Gaye Francis (07:35):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (07:36):

And I think that's where one of the things that our society is doing and this formalisation of risk management, particularly with the WHS legislation and the ISO 31000, I'm not sure in many ways it's actually doing, it's achieving the success people think it should. I mean, we spent a fair part of our life overturning Australian Standards because the difficulty we've got is that it's not an Australian Standard that's right. The standard isn't recognised good practice. It's the worthwhile ideas contained in the Standard. And very often there's a lot of good ideas and a lot of Standards, but not all the ideas and all standards are worthwhile.

Gaye Francis (08:12):

But you have to think with that. And I think a couple of courses that we've done recently with some transport organisations is you have to solve it from first principles first, come up with the best solution and then you go and check against the Standard. Whereas some of the engineers were saying, oh, but we just designed to the Standard. And the chief engineer was sort of saying, no, no, no, no. What are we trying to solve? What is the best solution that we can get.

Richard Robinson (08:37):

In order to achieve the outcomes that we want? And then we check back against the Standard. That's that quote I always give from that 1939 Chairman of Victoria Division of Engineers Australia: "Standards have two purposes to prevent fools from their folly and rogues from their roguery". Because you're meant to work at from first principles how it's supposed to be, and then you test back against the Standard, make sure you haven't stuffed something up. And likewise, if somebody, a contractor's done the work and it's wrong, the simplest way to hang the poor sod is to generally say you haven't complied with the Standard, you're toast. But I've seldom found a Standard that applies in all circumstances, in all ways. That's not the case, not a technical standard.

Gaye Francis (09:14):

And they're also lagging indicators as well. They're often five and 10 years old. And technology is improving at pace at the moment. And what was reasonable, what may not have been reasonable five years ago certainly should be considered again now. And with the technology that's available and the ideas that are available.

Richard Robinson (09:37):

Well, that's like underground mining in the shipping business where you're watching the changes. I mean, the first time I went underground, which was a long time ago now, but people are still talking nostalgically about air leak miners. That's where some guys have got a jackhammer basically supported on the leg hammering away, and they dug the rock out and then they put the chargers in, they lit it themselves, and then they came back and mucked it out themselves and did the whole thing by themselves. These were all lean people. There was never a plump air leak miner that I've ever seen. When I turned up, pretty much that was all gone and people were driving vehicles underground with giant machines doing various things.

Gaye Francis (10:18):

And now it's all remote control from above the surface.

Richard Robinson (10:22):

They're on Perth airport, just drive it remotely.

Gaye Francis (10:24):

Which is quite incredible.

Richard Robinson (10:26):

And that happened in about 30 years ago, I think.

Gaye Francis (10:28):

Yeah, it doesn't take long at all. I think one of the other things that is potentially happening is that the corporate memory is failing safety. So by having these really structured processes, it's stopping people talking within the organisation across different departments and projects across an organisation of all the studies that have been done. Some of the work and the questions that we've been asked recently; Richard and I've been in business for 25 years or a bit more together is: "Oh, we didn't know you did that study for us". And they've been done for different parts of the organisation and it's really a technique or a methodology that would help solve the current problem that they're coming to talk to us about and they don't know. So it's really interesting that the corporate memory in safety doesn't seem to be being shared and propagated throughout the organisation.

Richard Robinson (11:25):

Well, it's certainly more than that because R2A's modus operandi has always been: We'll train you to get it done and then you keep doing it. And that obviously works for a while until that person or people or that team moves on. So it's probably about a five year cycle the way it's going, because people don't seem to be lasting. It is not a career in the way in which things used to be these days.

Gaye Francis (11:48):

No. People are moving on from jobs and the turnover's quite high - two to five years.

Richard Robinson (11:53):

Correct. In fact, we still keep coming across people. Now, remember we did some lecturing at different universities at different times and 10 years later there's guys just looking at us going, ah, I remember you.

Gaye Francis (12:06):

So yes, we are the exception, Richard, we're still working together after that long.

Richard Robinson (12:11):

It's curious. Anyway.

Gaye Francis (12:13):

So all of these things is sort of making safety and the subject of risk management, I guess, in organisations, the management of safety, more complex and harder.

Richard Robinson (12:27):

Well, the one that I've noticed particularly is this Monte Carlo simulation for project risk. And people are signing off on that. And yet our experience has been, and you just commented at the recent risk conference you went to, you gave a paper at, what, eight weeks ago now or something? Not long ago. The ones that bite you is the big rare ones that you didn't think about. And that wasn't in your probability distribution. And that's why the big projects are failing.

Gaye Francis (12:50):

People aren't using a whole lot of techniques.

Richard Robinson (12:53):

We're not saying don't do Monte Carlos, by the way, because that'll tell you the most likely projects outcome, which is well worth knowing.

Gaye Francis (12:59):

But I think you need to do more than one. I think what we're finding now is one risk technique is not sufficient to find all of the risk issues just because they're such a merit of them.

Richard Robinson (13:12):

And hazops, for example, is not the only way to do it in the chemical industry. It never has been.

Gaye Francis (13:19):

So what we would suggest to you is, I guess that there's a whole lot of tools and techniques out there. They provide different insight into different risk issues. But if your organisation's doing only a single or using a single process and technique, then you're probably missing, particularly, the rare critical items.

Richard Robinson (13:41):

And when you're trying to address all issues of concern and demonstrate that all reasonable practicable precautions in place, you need to think generally more widely than most people we see are currently doing.

Gaye Francis (13:56):

I think we might leave it there. We could talk about this topic for quite a while and we might go into some depth on some of these topics a little bit further.

Richard Robinson (14:04):

It's not exactly a chat on Chatham Rules thing too. We might say something we shouldn't say.

Gaye Francis (14:10):

We do have that issue sometimes. So thanks for joining us again. Hope you found this episode interesting and we hope you can join us next time.

Richard Robinson (14:18):

Thanks, Gaye. Bye.